The Beer: Wipeout IPA
The Place: Pizza Port
The Food: BBQ Chicken Pizza
And People: The Buffy Group aka Lazarus, Mildly, XERO & myself
Conversation: Spiderman 2 and all things comic related.
Let's begin! Great casting! Thanks to director Sam Raimi we had all SF type people involved. Ted Raimi (Joxer) and also to tie-in with Buffy, appears in The Grudge (not yet released with SMG), Daniel Dae Kim (B-5 Crusade), Donna Murphy (Picard's love in ST Insurrection), and of course all time fan fave - Bruce Campbell.
But really this movie belonged not to Spiderman or MJ but to Aunt May! She ruled with advice and a hard right hand hit. Also loved the news editor Jameson, and I even teared up for the sad love story of Peter and MJ. The opening credit animation sequence was pretty great but the end credits went by so fast I missed them. The movie stood out well on it's own with no loose strings. The end tied in nicely with the next one so we know what to expect...
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Just ramblings today.
Almost July! I'm getting so into geek mode for the Con, it's kinda scary! Still no updates to the programming though. I've fallen behind on movies, I guess I'll make Spidey-2 the priority and see what happens later on. Who knew Michael Moore would rule the box office? I thought White Chicks was going to take the top spot for sure!
CSU Fullerton won the College World series so go So Cal! Padres continue to work for it in the NL.
The wine of the week is Banrock Station Chardonnay, in celebration of just 5 weeks until I'm there! Bring on the wine plane!
Mondo and Ms. Kitty came over yesterday to escape the craziness of the OB Street Fair. It was scrapbook city and I have my NYC pictures complete! Ms. Kitty on the other hand is still putting pictures of fish into her album and she may be stuck working on that trip forever. We forged on with the help of the Juneau Brewing Company and their Oatmeal Stout and Amber Ale.
We watched a B&W 1946 classic "Brief Encounter" from the Noel Coward play "Still Life." It's about two married people who meet on a train station and start a short, doomed, romance. It's so conservative that the inside DVD jacket tells a story of how audiences laughed at it in 1965. It is a reflection of the time and the issues and concerns of the two people provide an insight into a time & mindset that no longer exists.
Later it was off to Hennesey's for dinner and Guiness and then we were in the right frame of mind to wander Blockbuster for another movie. Getting the t...
Baseball week continues with my first ever visit to watch the Lake Elsinore Storm. They're a single A team affiliated with the Padres. The match-up last night was against the Inland Empire 66ers (Seattle Mariners) and the poor Storm was sadly outplayed last night. Final score 11-0, 66er's shut out the Storm.
The ballpark was fun though, so small you can see and hear everything. There were lots of giveaways tossed into the stands, people were friendly, there's still a silly mascot but above all - the park serves premium $2.00 beer!
I admit I couldn't handle staying until the end. It was just too painful to watch.
So go Storm! You are the Padres of the future.
Never a Rally Monkey! I guess that's good news for the Angels but I've yet to see that darn Monkey! Last night when Oakland was up by two, I thought "maybe tonight!" But the Angels rallied and it was all over for the Rally Monkey. It ended up being a great game and Angels won 10 - 2 over the A's.
The Padres also won last night over Arizona so go team!
There was no earthquake in Carlsbad this week. I don't know what went on over on the east side of the county but I'm sure it was not mass hypnosis.
Also - check the dates on emergency earthquake food. I suddenly realized I had better eat all those healthy snack bars and replenish the stock with new items. A year goes by so fast when it comes to stuff like that!
Happy Father's Day, Dad! And to all the other fathers out there! We're all gathering at Brad and Lorie's today for a BBQ and hopefully swimming. It's cold and yucky here on the coast but hopefully it'll clear up inland.
Mindless television alert - Anna Nicole's Caribbean Vacation is on tonight. Set your TiVo's!
I just washed my mouth out with soap! Quite by accident of course and it was the strangest sensation. Now most people don't have accidents like that but it could happen to anyone. It has to doing with earthquake preparedness and household laundry but we'll get to that in a moment.
The day started well, aside from the fact that it was raining and that everyone had to be on the freeway at 8:30 am. LJ and I went over to Cafe on Park for breakfast, which is always a filling experience. Then we went to Fashion Valley and saw Saved! Saved! turned out to be a witty and entertaining movie and not what you'd expect given the majority of the movie takes place within a Christian high school. Even more surprising was Mandy Moore and MacCauly Culkin both gave decent performances! The movie is almost a satire of the over-enthuasiatic Christians and hits home. If you are one of those types, you will not be amused but I sure laughed. Anyhow, Saved! I won't spoil it, you...
With the Yuma run over with, I settled into my Palm Desert hotel for the night. I thought I'd be able to see Jackie Chan in "80 Days" but the movie was playing at really odd times. I ended up seeing the Stepford Wives and it turned out to be surprisingly good! Yes, there are a couple of moments where stuff doesn't make sense at all, it was just done to be cool but that's all of 3 minutes of screen time. I found the movie funny, entertaining, and kind of scary when I realized that most of the women in Rancho Mirage/Palm Desert looked like the Stepford women! I guess it is the plastic surgery/spa center of California!
It's been slow the last few days. I have the NYC print pictures at Wal Mart so I'll be able to finish my album for that trip soon. I've been so motivated about Creative Memories, I even signed up for the Aspiring Leaders Program! I'm in full force Geek mode no matter what hobby I do these days! I'm behind on movies, hopefully I'll get caught up this week as I have a Yuma Run coming up. Nothing else to do at night in the desert towns. Wow, it's only Tuesday. 3 more days to go!
Darn! I don't know what came over me when I booked my SLC trip through SFO! The fog delays get me every time! I knew it was bad when all the SAN departures were delayed but I had a long layover so I wasn't too worried. It was when I got to SFO that the problems began. Delay after delay. I think the plane finally left 2.5 hours after the original time and I finally got into SLC at 11:00 pm. I did have Famous Person Sighting on my SFO commuter shuttle, it was Richard Kiel of James Bond fame. He's the big guy who played Jaws, with the metal teeth. He's still pretty big and has that voice that you don't want to hear in a dark alley.
Anyhow on Friday we did the usual SLC routine. Slept in, ate, hung out, slept some more, ate again, and gathered relatives. Cheryl and Scott were having an Open House reception, having been married earlier in the Mormon Temple. Everything was very informal and we had a great time playing with the chocolate fountain, the newest...
Summer TV season has begun and at last we get a new episode of Reno 911. I've been watching those reruns so many times it's just painful. I think there's a total of 14 new shows for the summer.
Dead Zone is also back and it's started off well. I just hope they don't do too much stuff with Future Guy. We already had that in Charmed and Trek.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - When will studios realize that audiences can handle a 3 hour movie if it's done right? This HP installment was 2.5 hours and we needed that extra 30 minutes of the story to leave satisfied. It seems like the movie just hit it's stride after 2 hours and then, school is over for the term.
As with any HP movie, it takes 2 showings to appreciate what's going on since so much happens. With this movie, if you haven't read the book, you might be lost from time to time. A lot of material is crammed in a short space of time. I was almost annoyed when all of a sudden (and it did feel abrupt) that the movie was over.
The three main actors continue to do a fantastic job of bringing Harry, Hermione, & Ron to life, and Alan Rickman continues to shine in his role of Snape.
I liked this HP movie but I'm not sure I loved it. I'll wait until I see it again to decide.
Life returns to normal - I've been gone so much that I almost forgot what a normal Friday night was like. Luckily I remembered as Ms. Kitty, LJ, and I all went to Karl Strauss last night for wonderful Oatmeal Stout and IPA! Plus huge amounts of food! Afterwards it was time to return home and watch ROTK on DVD once again. Just about as relaxing as you can get at the end of the week!
Day After Tomorrow - I just couldn't keep myself from going to see this movie. All the reviews have been bad but having just been to NYC, I wanted to see it in the new ice age. I went in with lowered expectations about the movie but after 10 minutes, I realized they were not low enough. I just sat there thinking it couldn't keep getting worse and it did. Finally, after the entire city was under tons of snow and all human who were dumb enough to be outside were frozen, somehow the four escaped wolves from the zoo managed to track down our heroes and attack them. Oh my gosh! They weren't even normal wolves they had turned into evil werewolves! (Just go see Van Helsing, it's an Oscar winner after this movie!) At this point I realized I was just stuck and luckily the movie was almost over so it started to get better just with that knowledge in my head. The special effects were okay, nothing new and exciting in technology. The tsunami over the Statue of Liberty was ...
I totally forgot to add in the part about the Brooklyn Bridge! After leaving Ellis Island, we took the subway over to Brooklyn. The whole idea was to have great pizza before walking across the bridge. We were starving and the guidebook said the best pizza place was right near the bridge promenade. Of course, there was no food anywhere to be found but I'm sure we took the wrong direction out of the subway. No matter, we followed the signs to the bridge and joined the walking crowd.
It was warm, clear and sunny now and the view was perfect of the harbor, city, skyline, etc... We took pictures and then pretty much power walked the bridge. It was fun and cheap (only $2.00 for the subway) and I recommend it to anyone not afraid of heights or bridges.