The Weekend In Review

I have temporarily lost access to the interwebs from my house. Otherwise I'd have posted about what went on this weekend, you know.... while it was STILL the weekend.

Oh well. Whatever.
Hotness will be coming back home tomorrow and she has all the info to call the people who can fix our connection. I'll just use my connection at work for now.

So anywhoooo.......
Hotness took off to see her mom on Friday.
I came home that evening after work and picked up the mail. In the mailbox were my copies of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and Fanboys.
I fed the cat. Got dinner for myself (some tacos! Yum!) and sat down to watch MSvsGO.

Alright before I go into details, we ALL know that this movie isn't going to be the summer blockbuster to beat all blockbusters. It was a 'direct-to-video' release, fer cryin' out loud!
So my expectations were set low to begin with.

The acting is cheesy, but Debbie Gibson (or, Deborah as she's calling herself now) does a fairly decent job. She's no great actress, but she actually does okay in this film.
Lorenzo Lamas plays a government jerk, so not much of an acting stretch for him.

The story starts out kind of quick and takes off without a lot of explaining and quickly jumps from one scene to the next.
For example: Debbie Gibson is a marine biologist studying whales off the Alaska Coast. (And by the way... apparently Hammerhead sharks, moray eels and hard corals also can be found off the coast w-a-y up north there).
There's an accident... caused by the military, go figure... that releases the creatures.
After that we're suddenly in California looking at a dead, beached whale while an oil drilling platform is attacked off the Japanese coast. All of this takes place in about 24 hours.

The one lone survivor from the Japanese attack is jailed in a FEDERAL prison, for reasons that never get explained, but yet he gets to talk to a civilian scientist about "what happened out there".
The prisoner draws a very detailed picture of the creature, despite it being night time when the attack happened and the entire oil platform crumbling and falling into the sea... with him on it.

The military (ours, of course) is already out hunting down this rougue monster (even though they don't know what it is) and after just one attempt to kill it, decide that this is way beyond their field of expertise. (The U.S. Military backs down after trying... and failing.. to blow up a big shark in the middle of International waters?) now it's time to call in the "experts". Those of course being Ms. Gibson, her renegade biology professor and the Japanese scientist who got detailed descriptions of a creature he couldn't identify from a survivor that was being held in a FEDERAL prison and yet was able to fly to the United States to share the "classified" information.

They discover something that "just might work" to capture the beasties and then they are off into the big wide Pacific Ocean to capture a shark that is big enough to take a bite out of the Golden Gate Bridge and can leap into the air to catch a jumbo jet.

Anyway, you can see how this is going so I'll stop there.
It's dorky and hokey and everything you'd expect from something of this (low) caliber a film.

One thing that really did bother me about the film, was the computer animation sequences were constantly recycled.
The used the same scenes every time they showed the shark. The octopus didn't have much of an appearance, but the few it had were also the same repeated scenes.
The submersible craft that they used in the beginning of the film to study whales looks exactly like the submersible craft that the military employs to hunt down the animals.
So that got old really quick.

The movie is only 90 minutes long, so it only seems like you've lost years of your life watching it.

After that movie was done, I popped in Fanboys.
This movie was laugh-out-loud funny. There are a metric ton of Star Wars references as well as other pop culture topics. There are also quite a few cameo appearances in it. For instance: William Shatner, Carrie Fisher, Ray Park, Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, and a few others.
Also Seth Rogan plays two roles in the film. One is a nerdy Star Trek "trekker" (NOT "trekkie!) and the other is a redneckish, Star Wars-loving pimp.

It didn't get a lot of good reviews when it came out, so it didn't last long in the theaters. But it was definitely worth watching and a good way to make up for having seen the earlier DVD.

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On Saturday, I had a double-dose of the ballet. My niece (4 yrs. old, by the way) had her very first ballet recital early in the day. I went and watched her dance (or rather, she didn't after she got on stage and became too shy in front of everyone).
Then I hustled home to shower, shave, and get ready for the ballet in Seattle that evening.

With Hotness being out of town I was left with an extra ticket. I had already purchased one extra because we we're bringing a friend with us, but now I had two.

I talked her boyfriend into joining us for the evening. She really wanted him to go, but he was trying to avoid it if he could. He & I texted back-and-forth and I talked him into going, after I told him the two of them could have my season ticket seats... for FREE.

He kept it a secret from her about him going, and she didn't know about it until he got dressed and told her he was coming along. Needless to say she was happy.

The ballet itself was a mixed bag of pieces.

There was a contemporary dance. A more modern dance. And a classical dance. So really we got to see a little of everything. I won't bore you the details about the individual pieces and sum it up like this: The first one was contemporary and in my opinion, way too long. It was accompanied by a piano. At first it was nice but after a while the "plinky plinky" of the piano get to be irritating and the dances all seemed alike. This one just didn't interest me.

The second one was very short and very modern. It involved only two dancers and was quite interesting to see them both interact.

The last piece was more of a classical piece and ended with about 50 ballerinas on the stage at one time. Quite a spectacle to see!

So the last two pieces more than made up for the hum-drum (in my opinion) of the first one.

Afterwards the three of us walked to Dick's for a burger and to wait for traffic to clear out before we went to Pomodoro for appetizers and flaming desserts.
We ate and had a wonderful time.
When the evening finally ended, I think I got home shortly before 2 a.m.

I slept in until the cat woke me up and then stumbled around the house for the better part of Sunday. I didn't really get anything accomplished, but it was nice to not have to be anywhere and just relax.

That was pretty much my weekend.
How was yours?