Paradise Re-found

I never made it to India due to reasons that I won't discuss because it would validate my stupidity.  Basically, I'm doing a sucky job of traveling this time around.  But at least I'm still having fun.

Last night, I went to see Hancock at a movie theater.  This movie theater was pretty amazing.  First of all, the movie theater isn't general seating.  You get to pick what seat you'd like to sit in on a touch screen.  Also the closer you seat to the screen the cheaper the ticket is.  I ended up paying only $4 for my ticket (and I wasn't really that close).  The concessions are very reasonably priced.  I ended up paying $4 for a bucket of popcorn and a large drink.  They have three different types of popcorn to choose from: plain, caramel and white cheese.  The cheese one was much better than that crazy orange cheesy popcorn I've grown up with.  

My movie was on screen #4 but I was only able to locate screens #5-15.  Then I finally figured out that my movie was playing on the labeled Royal Grand Cinema.  This was a ginormous theater room that looked like it should have been for a formal opera performance.  There were two balconies and the upper one was a special VIP room with comfy recliners.  

The advertisements at the beginning were pretty much the same as what we have in America except for two things.  1) They were in Thai and 2) they made you stand while they played the Thai national anthem and showed a video about the king.  

I think I would vomit if I had stand up and watch a video of the life of George Bush every time I wanted to see a movie.

Oh yeah... the movie was great. 

I saw the new Indiana Jones movie last night. 

All I have to say is, "What the hell?  Seriously?"

I'm watching High School Musical - and yes I have it on the sing-a-long version. 

I've got netflix and my curiosity has gotten the best of me.  I had to see what the big deal about it was.

**EDIT** 5 minutes into the movie... This is SO horribly cheesy bad!

**EDIT** 14 minutes into the movie...  He has to be gay.  This is like a knock-off of Grease for today's youth.  This is REALLY bad!

**EDIT** Official review of the movie:  It was like somebody told the Disney Channel that she was fat. Then, she started showing signs of bulimia nervosa.  After a stressful night, she engaged in a recurrent binging of what looks like "Grease," Romeo and Juilet, and "Mean Girls" and then, subsequently purged all over the screen of my laptop.

but I do like to try interesting things (as long as it's within my weird range of picky-ness).

Last night, we went to The Harbor in Rockwall to see the movie Juno.  It didn't start until 9:40 so we walked around for awhile and decided to eat dinner.  We found a recently opened restaurant that could only be described as attempting to be uppity Mexican food.  The menu wasn't a typical menu like from TexMex restaurants  and the prices were definitely on the high side. 

I decided to have some fun and be adventurous.  Under the beverage section, there was a drink called horchata (rice milk).  This drink was SO good and very sweet.  It balanced out the heat from the salsa really well.  Then for the main dish, I don't remember what it was called but the description said shrimp and octopus cocktail.  I was expecting five shrimp and octopi to be hanging out in a glass filled with cocktail sauce.  I was very surprised when they brought out a huge cocktail glass that was full of meat and a watery tomato soup.  It also had red onion, avocado, lime, cilantro and ceviche.  I started with the shrimp and slowly nibbled my way into the octopus and the other mystery fish.  It was extremely good.   I was very satisfied with it.

Once I had decided that I liked it, one of my roommates said, "OMG it looks like there are brains in your cocktail."  I turned the glass around to find what looked like it should have been in a sci-fi film.  I curiously dug to the bottom and found that the cocktail was also full of oysters.  Now I'm not a fan of oysters but this is only because I had never really been presented with the opportunity to try them.  So I went for it.  I'm glad I did because now I can say that I definitely do not like oysters.  They were totally gross and slimy.  As the oyster slid down my throat, my body tried vomit - twice.  I fought the reflex and managed to keep the oysters down.  But in my head, I kept imagining myself spewing oysters and horchata all over the stuck-up, snobby bitch that was sitting at the table next to ours.

People say "I'll try anything once."  This is totally not me.  I have a saying... "Anything I'll try, I'll try twice."  I'm a picky eater but the stuff I do try, I will always give a second chance.  So I will try oysters again but it won't be for a long time.

Oh btw... Juno is a really good movie.  But when she threw up in the movie, I kept my eye out for the exit sign in case the oysters tried to make another getaway.

I saw Harry Potter today.  Oh it was so good.  That's all I'm gonna say cause I don't want to spoil anything.

Before you read the following, you need to know that I'm a big movie snob sometimes.

The star-struckedness of Shreveport has been cracking me up.  In the last two years, Shreveport has been the filming location for several big movies: The Guardian, Premonition, Factory Girl, The Reaping... just to name a few. 

On the radio, people will call in and say "I saw Diane Keaton at Rack Room Shoes!" or "Queen Latifah was buying tampons at the Piggly Wiggly!"  It makes me laugh because who the fuck cares.  I've seen celebrities, met the president, etc... people need to get over it.  It might be cool the first time but come on.  I'm afraid the movie world is seeing that Shreveport is a bunch of backward hicks that piss themselves whenever a famous person walks by. 

What's even crazier is to have friends be extras in movies and then they think that they are movie stars.  Who cares if you were lead homeless person that had one line that ended up being cut during production.  Is it really that big of a deal to be listed as Escort #2 on imdb.com? Give up the acting 'career' and get back to your real life.

So yesterday, I pulled up to the Sylvan parking lot and saw that there were three or four huge trailers where we normally park.  I found a new place to park and didn't think anything about it.  During the first hour of tutoring, someone walked in and yelled that Tom Cruise was just seen walking into one of the trailers.  You would have thought they were giving away free donuts at a fat farm.  It took less than five seconds for almost the entire Sylvan office to evacuate and run out to the lobby and outside.  This included all the students being tutored, the staff doing the tutoring and the directors of Sylvan as well.  The only ones that didn't move were myself and another one of the tutorers.  I just looked at her and said "Apparently Tom Cruise is more important than education." 

A few moments later, there was a Katie Holmes sighting and again people ran outside.  Now this is slightly more understandable because Katie is WAY better than crazy-couch-jumping Tom Cruise, but come on.  It's hard enough to teach these students (who are already failing mind you) without having celebrities add yet another distraction.  This didn't make me angry but I just thought the behavior was ridiculous especially from the adults who were acting worse than the kids. 

So much for trying to set a good example.  Next time, I'm just going to run around the office like a fool like everyone else.

My roommate brought home this movie called Salo

OMG this has got to be the second craziest movie I've ever seen.  It's an old 70s sadistic, scat, snuff, soft-core porno.  I would highly suggest not watching it.

Oh yeah the worst film I've ever seen is Blood-Sucking Freaks.  Don't watch that one either.

Borat

OMG this was the most God-awful, horribly offensive movie I've ever seen... and I loved every minute of it.  After being addicted to South Park (and other shows) and then living in Amsterdam, I figured that I was pretty much ready for anything.  But this movie proved me wrong.  I couldn't believe someone would actually do all that stuff (even if some of it was scripted).  But I was really laughing to hard to care.  Yes I'm probably going to hell for enjoying this movie too much.

Now in The Netherlands, movies are in English with Dutch subtitles.  This only causes a problem when someone in the movie is talking in another language because it is only translated into Dutch for the subtitles.  So In this movie, I missed a lot of the jokes when they were speaking in "Kazakh."

Superman Returns

What the hell has been with the movies we've been renting lately.  We've got a bad streak going or something.

I thought this movie was horrible.  First of all, the casting... Kate Bosworth was bad.  Also this was the first role for Kevin Spacey that I have hated (he's been awesome in everything else I've seen him in).  I liked Brandon Routh as Clark Kent.  He is hot and has the look down.  The only problem was that they used CGI for Superman WAY too much.  He looked too cartoonish the whole time.  The plot was just weird and hard to follow.  I was very disappointed.  :-(

Date Movie

This has got to be the dumbest movie I have ever seen.  It wasn't even dumb in a good way.  I think I actually lost a few brain cells just by watching the movie.  I just can't figure out why someone thought that it should be released.  The concept was good just like all the other parady movies.  It was just executed wrong or something.  That's all I have to say about that.

I just saw the trailer for Charlotte's Web.  OMG I'm SO overly excited about this.

Back in May, the house was broken into and the only things stolen were my DVDs (more than 60 of them). It was strange because there are things in this house FAR more valuable than movies. They only took my DVDs but not the VHS ones. I wasn't really phased by it (I didn't even post anything in LJ about it). My roommate was more upset about it than I was.

Anyway, fastforwarding to the present. My roommate received a large package from UPS today/yesterday and I just left it on the counter for him. I ended up falling asleep before he got home. I woke up around 1:45 and went to get some water. The package had been opened so I peeked in.

It was my replacement DVDs!!! The insurance company had me make a list of titles that were stolen. Trying to remember all 60+ DVDs was hard but I think I managed to remember about 63 of them. If I would have known that they would have been replaced I would have come up with a lot more of the DVDs that I "owned." I went through the box and there were only 39 of them in there. I'm wondering if they will send more later or this is all I get back. All these movies look brand new. When I orginally bought them myself they would always be used DVDs from movie stores. Also they sent me some special edition versions that I didn't have. I'm anxious to see the special stuff on those.

Having at least some of my DVDs back makes me happy. :-)