Saturday, August 05, 2006

Bachelors, Ex-Girlfriends, and Pirates. Oh my!

Week two of my forced bachelorhood is nearing its end. Stacy’s flight back starts Monday night, but ends Tuesday morning. So what have I accomplished with all of my free time? Nothing. Nothing productive, at least. I did get in some quality video game time, catch up on a bunch of recorded TV, hang out with my brother-in-law, and watch a bunch of movies. Doing the laundry and mowing half a lawn in the last week and a half is as productive as I have been. I’ll be getting to the rest of the lawn on Monday. Record temperatures kept me from doing lawn work this last week, that and my inherent laziness. It was all I could do most days hauling my butt out of bed before noon. Meh.

Jon and I went to My Super Ex-Girlfriend this week with my brother-in-law, Ryan. I have to admit that it was a lot better than I thought it would be. I was expecting a few laughs here and there, but I was not prepared to laugh as much and as hard as I did. Jon and Ryan seemed to enjoy it too. There was even a good dig at Utah in there. Being pretty self-deprecating anyway, I can take a good joke at the expense of the physical capital of the LDS religion. Utah does suck by many standards. Uma Thurman plays the psychotic ex-girlfriend a little too well, which added to the fun of the movie. Just imagine anything a crazy ex-girlfriend might do and then multiply that by a hundred. Hilarity ensued. Luke Wilson, the tolerable Wilson brother, played a decent straight man. I was a bit disappointed in his lack of adventurous spirit, though. Even with my fear of heights, I think even I would have enjoyed the triple F (free fall [expletive deleted].) Ah well, his attitude was more of a plot device than anything, so I can’t fault him too much. I was pleasantly surprised when Eddie Izzard made his entrance. I hadn’t done any research on the movie and didn’t know he was in it. I enjoy seeing Eddie in anything. If you haven’t seen it already, find a copy of Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill. You will thank me or I will mock your sense of humor mercilessly. (I see at Amazon that Eddie has some more work that I need to check out.) Anna Faris was just kinda there. She didn’t add much to the experience. I can’t take her seriously after seeing her in Scary Movie and its many sequels. The show stealer was definitely Rainn Wilson of The Office fame. Far from his love-to-hate character of Dwight, he played Luke’s lecherous friend. His sage nuggets of man-wisdom were interrupted only by his chauvinistic pick-up attempts. Should you go see this? Definitely. It is one of those rare films that is fun to go see it with the guys or on a date with your better half. Just hope the latter doesn’t get any ideas for what to do to you if you dump her (or him, whatever.)

I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest with Ryan and a coworker of his last night. It was just as good the second time around. We went to the Manassas Cinemas to see it, which besides being only a couple of blocks away from home, is the only movie cafĂ© nearby. I dig ordering dinner while watching a movie on the big screen. I recently spoke with Jamie about this movie and she, as she is wont to do, waxed crazy. “We didn’t like it. There weren’t enough fight scenes.” Awuh? Lessee, I counted four fight scenes, one of which was the most fantastic feat of fight choreography I have ever seen. For those sad few of you that haven’t see the movie, let me just ask you to imagine a three-way sword fight taking place on top of and inside a runaway mill water wheel. Sound cool? It is. That is not including the two (or three, depending how you count them) fantastic scenes battling the [spoiler deleted]! The surprise ending was a stroke of genius. Not only did it end the movie with a marvelous flourish, it made me really excited for the trilogy finale. Then there is the fact that it’s about pirates, and there’s nothing better than pirates.

And, since you can’t top pirates, I think I’ll draw this entry to a close.