Star Wars and Stuff

Long weekend holiday with the wide release of Star Wars (Episode III). What could be better? On Friday night I joined Mike, Joel, Zach, Titus and Eddie for a 10:10 pm showing at Silver City. I was there more than two and a half hours in advance, though I eventually lost my third spot in line. The crowd cheered and applauded when the opening scrawl came up, with me yelling and clapping along with them.

On Sunday evening, my sister and I went to the Mustang Drive-In theatre for a triple bill: Robots, Star Wars and Fever Pitch. My brother took another vehicle and went with our two kids from South Korea, and Richard and Tara joined us in their car. Quite fun, including the two hours that we spent hanging around as our cars were lined up down the side of the road waiting for it to open. Laura and didn't finished the evening until 3:30 am. Richard had a Darth Vader helmet with a variety of quotes from the original trilogy plus a function that could warp the sound of your own voice. He and Tara also performed a dramatic duel for us with two light-up light sabers that Richard had. Geekdom is good.

And finally, I took Catherina, Celia and Grace to Wellington 8 Cinema on Monday afternoon for a showing of Star Wars. I finished the afternoon off with dinner at their place, which was nice because I hadn't seen the family in quite a while. Throw in two more softball games in the evening with my church team and it was another good day.

As for my movie ratings, Episode III was excellent. Maybe 4.5 out of 5. It better have been good since I saw it three times this weekend, though that does seem to be all that I can take for that movie until the DVD comes out years from now. The worst part was "Noooooo!" and I can't forgive the movie for that dramatic atrocity. It's just begging to be parodied and mocked for decades to come, as "Khaaaaan!" has been for Star Trek.

Robots was a fun loving movie though it didn't have much at all in the way of suspense. Nice kid-friendly logic, though Robin William's cross-dressing robot got on my nerves after a while. 4 out of 5, with the caveat that it's a kid movie.

Fever Pitch was a romantic comedy ("ewwww...") that was done by the Farelly Brothers and was tied to the Boston Red Sox "redemption" from last year. Jimmy Fallon surprised me with a continuous string of funny one liners, but the real-life fairy tale for the Sox was was put the movie over for me. Gotta love the Red Sox Nation...or not. Another 4/5, which means that this triple bill was pretty darn satisfying.

Enough with the movies. To catch up on my birthday from last Monday, it was all good. Ma grandmama ma donne d'argent quelque semaine passe and my family chipped in and bought me a pay-as-you-go cell phone from Virgin. The phone has been quite useful so far, and please feel free to contact me if you want the number.

My brother bought me the DVD box set of Season 1 and 2 for The Family Guy, which was excellent. I would even rate that ahead of the cell phone for enjoyment value. Heh. Richard gave me a gift card for Blockbuster that will come in handy and Tara gave me a gift card to Chapters for a Foxtrot/Dilbert comic of my choosing. Tara baked me a cake this past Wednesday at cell group and I received a nice hand-made card from Claire 'cause she's a sweety. My cell group also gave me a nice card that included each of the Dilbert comics from the newspaper in the past week, which was thoughtful.

In addition, I received some nice e-mails, phone calls and MSN messages from friends, including a couple from whom I haven't heard in a while. And so I say, it's good to be twenty-seven years old. Thanks, everyone.