Monday, July 31, 2006

The Producers

The Producers

Just got it in the mail and watched it again the other day. I REALLY love this movie, but I should only see it once every six months or so. Six months between viewings leaves me remembering enough that I laugh till my face hurts still, few jokes spoiled. Twice in a month leaves me enjoying myself a lot, but for the more subtle goodness about the movie.

Actually, I did this on, like, Thursday, and then on Friday I watched Drumline. I really liked it quite a bit. Orlando Jones played a character that I really liked and respected, the story was okay, pretty average stuff, but it’s still helped by the aspects of the story based on a real person.

Today, I watched In Her Shoes. It was so good, it had parts where I laughed, and parts where I cried, and parts where I hated a character one minute and loved and sympathized with her the next. That’s a new favorite of mine.

Last night I saw Scanner Darkly. All I can really say without breaking into a full on rant is that it was everything I’d hoped for deep down in my heart.

On Saturday I spent all day with almost all of my friends helping Justin move, it was one of the coolest days ever, even though more than half of it had 0 A/C. It really helped to go swimming afterwards.

Hehe, well, that’s too much to write about, it all feels so incredibly condensed, like a weekend in extreme brief. Next weekend will be worse/better depending on which angle you’re viewing it from.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

NJ Continued

NJ Continued…


Well, after getting to NYC on Saturday we popped out around 32nd and… 7th I believe, maybe 8th. Walked all the way up to Times Square, and then spent most of the day bouncing between there, 44th at 7th and 60th at 5th. Around about 4 in the afternoon we got tickets to see the 8 o’clock show of The Producers, a musical comedy I’d seen for the first time in its film translation last December, and which was definitely surpassed by the live Broadway version.

We also ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp, a very good restaurant both times we were over there, I wish we had one down here in Houston, their Bourbon Mahi Mahi was downright fricken awesome. Mike wasn’t adventurous enough to try any of the tiny interesting places we saw around the place.

There was an impressive wedding going on in one of the cathedrals we saw the inside of on the streets traveling between one place and another. The gothic style was extremely impressive.

Two stores that were totally unimpressive: Nintendo Store and Apple store. The Apple store is open 24/7 365, something difficult to appreciate till you need a Mac on Christmas Eve, which, I didn’t since it was early July on a day when places are supposed to be open anyway. Moreover, the selection was still way too similar to the local Mac store in the Galleria mall.

I was incredibly hyped about the Nintendo store till I got there, some very nice displays where out, but when it came right down to it I couldn’t find a single thing worth buying that I couldn’t get anywhere else, no custom styli, or even games that I couldn’t get anywhere else. They had a very interesting little GameBoy museum, but nothing really special about that, it was locked in a case, I’ve seen pics from it online aready. Ultimately a disappointing experience since every single Toys R Us, WalMart, BestBuy, Fry’s, Gamespot, and Eb Games has the same selection, nothing compared to online shopping.

After the Broadway show we took the train back to Morristown, and Sunday was spent recuperating. Neither Saturday nor Monday had very good dinner because of how everything up there closed so early, same with Sunday night. I’m not saying that the hours are horrible, but you definitely have to be prepared for there being times of day where there is literally no where to go get food from if you haven’t eaten yet, meaning keep your fridge stocked.

The second trip to NYC started later, and we saw the Guggenheim, and the Metropolitan museums. The Metropolitan is incredible, I could spend a month there, days on each exhibit studying everything in it carefully and drawing. The Guggenheim not so much, I just wasn’t really impressed by the only exhibit they had, even if most of the side halls had some very good work in them.

We left shortly after the Museums though, Mike was hesitant to go for a walk in central park, so I missed that and the zoo.

Tuesday was also very cool, spent it looking at Ellis and Liberty Islands. I could have skipped Liberty Island completely, but Ellis is a lifetime memory. I can’t think of a better place in the entire world to spend the fourth of July than where so many people spent their first moments in the country. I can only imagine what it was like to pass through there at the time when it was used so much. It rained on us as we were taking off from Liberty, got a little damp.

After the islands, and the rain, not knowing how soon or if the rain would come again, also having nothing to sit on other than wet grass, we decided not to wait for 4 hours after browsing the island museums to see the fireworks so we went to Mike’s apartment and watched some recorded shows that we hadn’t seen before. Wednesday was spent on breakfast and general relaxation before hitting the airport. It wasn’t possible to visit Jason, he just didn’t get in contact with me in time to make plans, I wasn’t even able to talk to him till Monday night, which was just way too late, I didn’t even go back to NYC after that let alone the state. Maybe next time he’ll call me.

I’ll probably go back up again in the not too distant future depending on the outlook, the total for the whole trip was maybe 500 to 600 dollars tops including the plane flight. Next year I’m going to San Diego, lets see how that goes.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Bourbon Sauce

Bourbon Sauce

½ cup butter
3 cloves chopped garlic
1/3 cup Dijon mustartd
1/3 cup hot sauce
1 tablespoon fresh ground pepper
Brown sugar
½ cup Kentucky bourbon

Friday, July 07, 2006

So I've Failed

So I’ve Failed


I used to write journals every single weekday. I really succeeded for a long time, and then I suddenly quit after I was running two journals at the same time. I feel that this really hurt me, and I need to get back in the habit.

Last weekend started Thursday evening and ended late Wednesday night. It was such an incredibly awesome vacation, I flew up to New Jersey, the furthest I’ve ever traveled on my own before, I felt more grown up than anything has ever made me feel before. That’s sad because I’m 25 and I still feel like a kid all the time. Everything is still so scary and new that it’s insane.

The flight up was uneventful, the plane landed and left on time, everything went smoothly, and it was also incredibly dull. The service was just average; everything was just sort of okay at best. The flight back down, however, was an entirely different story, it left two hours late, leaving me at the airport in uncomfortable conditions for a total of four hours, but everyone was even tempered, and once aboard the plane, the captain gave funny announcements even though it was 30 minutes of being taxied before takeoff, and the crew was much more helpful. I was sold headphones to watch the in flight movie, I wasn’t even given the opportunity on the first flight. It was a really good movie too, called something new.  The food was better, and I even had an extremely good book to read during the flight, which was so awesome to contemplate over while I listened to classical music over the headphones, very soothing music, after the movie was over, never ever fly without headphones. Freakanomics is the name of the book. It’s insanely delectable.

I hereby cease to use the word “insane” any longer within this narrative; it is no longer necessary, even though it will contain two trips to NYC. I arrived around about 12:05 in Jersey, and Mike met me at the baggage claim. It took a while to get home after a freak wrong turn, and we stopped and ate at Whitecastle, probably the most dreadful fast food I’ve ever had in my life. After that, sleep commenced at about 2 or 3 in the A.M., and we woke up around 8:30 or 9:30, and had breakfast at a place Mike has been bragging about, and rightfully so.

Perkin’s is a superb breakfast joint. I’d pick them over IHOP any day, I wish they were 24 hours. Their hash brown pancakes are simply mouthwatering, and all their other food was delicious. We made a habit out of breakfasting there, except for one day that it was too crowded so we went to another place called Vermont’s, or something similar, but which was a far cry from Perkin’s.

After that we barely missed the 10:28 train and ended up having to take the 11:24 to NYC for the day. While we were there, some things immediately disappointed me, like Times Square. I really expected more than just a mass of really big stores. None of them even seemed to have the collection of merchandise of other local stores except the classical section of the Virgin Megastore. The day went on like this, store to store, with lots and LOTS of walking for most of the day, a total of slightly over 200 blocks all together for both days inside of NYC.

I have to break for now, I have a lot of work to do, and I probably wont get finished before I have to leave work as it is. I’ll write more tonight or tomorrow.
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