So this past weekend was interesting. Stephanie’s big sister Emily and her husband Dustin came up from Florida to visit us. We spent Saturday at Carowinds and nearly got into a fight! We were in line for the Borg Assimilator (the newest ride==the longest line), and the ride broke down for the second time while we were in line, about three-fourths of the way through. So we sat down on the ground (why bother standing when the line isn’t moving?). A little while later three people walk up past us and stand in front of us. We assume they are with the people in front of us and don’t really say anything. But at some point it occurred to Dustin that these people didn’t know the people in front of them. So asks “do you know them?” They all just kinda shook their heads and Dustin says “Why don’t you guys go back where you came from.” Well that did nothing, and then the girl (it was two guys and a girl) gets on her cell phone and starts talking about us very loudly. She felt that passing us was justified because we “weren’t moving.” Nevermind that the ride was broken down and the line wasn’t moving at all. Apparently we are supposed to be pressed fully against the people in front of us. Next Dustin gets in front of them and says “you guys weren’t moving” and then the girl shoves him pretty hard. At this point Emily jumps out of line and runs up to the station and yells “We need security, there’s about to be a fight in the line!” So a park employee guy comes and the girl tries to say they didn’t do anything, but everyone else that they passed spoke up and said that wasn’t true. Then she tries to tell the guy how we weren’t moving so they had a right to pass us. When given the option of going back to where they were in line or getting ejected from the park, they chose the former. Afterwards they continued to talk about us loudly enough that we could still hear them. She said Dustin was on her “hitlist”. What was frightening was that they ended up on the same train as us. But fortunately all they did was stare at us as we walked down the ramp after the ride.
In an unrelated topic, I saw the new Star Wars movie this weekend. I borrowed episodes one and two from someone at work last week and watched them before seeing the movie, since I haven’t seen either since they were in the theaters. I still thought episode one was completely terrible. And I still thought episode two was pretty good. And I was very impressed with episode three. Judging solely by Maddox’s comments on the movie (don’t click if you haven’t seen it!), I think other people must have liked it too (I could look for reviews to see if that’s true but I don’t feel like doing that...). He didn’t like it, but he also doesn’t like any of the Star Wars or Lord Of The Rings movies, and disliking stuff is kind of his thing so his opinion isn’t all that relevant. The acting still wasn’t that great, and I think I know why: it takes a better director than George Lucas to get people to act like they’re not in front of a blue screen when in fact they are. I’ve seen Garden State so I know that Natalie Portman is a better actress than that. Not that it involved blue screens. I thought they did a good job with the story, especially given all the constraints that the script was under in order to be consistent with the other five movies. Anakin’s path to the dark side seemed plausible enough to me. I would discuss more but I won’t in case you haven’t seen it yet.
Oh yeah, today is June First. Happy Gay Pride Month!
I haven’t posted in a while... but I’ve got a couple of topics I’ve had in my head.
I guess I can start by saying that Stephanie and I have decided to do NetFlix. We’re just gonna do it for the summer while all the tv shows we would otherwise watch are in reruns. In case you’re not familiar with NetFlix, I’ll debrief you. We pay $14.99/month. We go on their website and add movies that we’d like to watch to our list. They send us the first two movies on the list. When we’re done watching them, we send the movies back. Postage is paid for both ways by Netflix. Once they get a movie back from us, they send out the next one on our list. And it only takes a day to get a movie since one of their distribution centers is in Greensboro. It’s a nice way for us to get movies that we have been wanting to see for a while.
On a related story, we watched Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow. We were not particularly fond of the film. It was super-long and s l o o o w w w. It was kind of impressive because everything was shot in front of blue screens. The only thing in any of the scenes that was not generated on a computer was the actors themselves. But again, it’s hard to act in front of a blue screen and it shows. The characters seem so monotonous and boring. And of course Angelina Jolie is there to make the movie worse. While her part was small and she may have done the best acting of anyone in that particular movie... she just annoys me. A lot.
perish every fond ambition
Photos from the wedding and the wedding showers are now up on the photos page. I got the pictures from my mom’s camera this weekend. Most of the ones from my camera came out blurry. If you were there and have any other pictures in digital format I’d appreciate if you’d send them my way. And if you want any of these pictures in 3-4 megapixel size just let me know.
So here’s an idea that I’ve had for quite a while. Everyone I tell it too seems to think it’s at least a decent idea.
Why not make a prequel to Space Balls? Call it something like “Space Balls: Episode -2”. There should be a character who’s a spoof of Jar-Jar. They should take a girl in sixth grade and spend about three hours teaching her how to use Maya and have her do all the animation for this character, so that it will look really bad (but on-purpose bad). And the character should have some random accent. And the Anakin-spoof character should be really whiny and stupid, and maybe handicapable.
Well I think that certainly a start to a decent movie plot. If anyone is Mel Brooks’s cousin or something, give him my idea. I’ll even provide it royalty free.
I finally got around to piecing together some of my Hawai’i photos into panoramics. You can view them on my photos page.
Stephanie and I just finished beating Paper Mario 2: The Thousand Year Door. It was lots of fun. We clocked in at fifty-three hours and thirty-three minutes. That’s a lot more than I really expected. Now I have the challenge collecting all of the things that can be collected in the game. This includes all eighty-five badges (we have sixty-three of them), all of Zess T.’s dishes (we have three out of something like fifty), and the log of all the enemies (we are missing fourteen out of one hundred and twenty-four). I’ll enjoy it. I don’t really think Steph will get the same enjoyment out of it. But I’m not above using GameFAQs for this task. Ten years ago I might have purchased a player’s guide. Now I don’t see the point as I can get all that info for free.
Somehow Stephanie and I got sucked into watching Britney and Kevin: Chaotic. It was much worse than we had expected, and believe me our expectations were low. This show made Jessica Simpson seem sophisticated. I’m not sure if this show was a series or just a special. It focused on her wedding, and I think the producers only had about ten minutes of usable footage. But that didn’t stop them from making the show an hour long. The show was more like “Britney and Kevin’s Crappy Home Movies.”
Do you like the way I rock it boy I think its so chaotic
