This guy.
Yeah, he's still around. He's on an extensive spoken-word tour and he's coming to Halifax, yay! And we have tickets, yay! Mike isn't a fan but he's going anyway. I'm not even sure what he talks about these days - looks like gay marriage, most likely the war in Iraq, other human rights stuff. The show isn't until March; fortunately I'm a patient person. :-)
In a nutshell: don't go there.
Mike and I both ordered the Angus striploin. If what we were served was Angus, I'm the queen of Siam. I've had better tasting sawdust. Fatty, tasteless pulp. The "frites" were over-seasoned and the service, while adequate, was, well, zombie-like. I guess unless you're ordering drinks they aren't too interested in you. The only thing going for the place was the music; it was pretty good, mostly 80s but not bubblegum-pop.
The Carleton is owned by Mike Campbell and Mike Rhodes, better known to some from their 80s Much Music show, Mike and Mike's Excellent X-Canada Adventures. Fun show. Lousy restaurant. Perhaps they should be concert promoters or something instead.
Yes, I saw a Trailer Park Boys film. And to add to the shame: I enjoyed it. I don't watch the show; however, the trailer for this film cracked me up so I had to see it. The hilarity for me was mostly due to the use of Independent Armored Transport in the film. I work for the government licensing private security guards, so I was really getting a kick out of this.
Sooo, how to review a film like Trailer Park Boys? I guess the "plot" is a cat-loving guy who was in jail comes home to discover his kitties have been picked up by the SPCA. His friends try to help him raise the money to basically buy his cats back. Of course, we're talking about drinking, pot-smoking (and growing in the series), cussing-up-a-storm losers, so naturally it makes more sense to them to try to bust the kitties out of the SPCA. Keyword is "try". The other "plot" is the owner (?) of the trailer park is now managing a newer, nicer park and needs to run their septic line through the trailer of one of the boys. Unfortunately he refuses to sell his trailer to allow the septic line. The manager (Mr. Lahey) used to be an alcoholic and eventually returns to his evil ways less than half-way through the film. Yes, it was funny, but so outrageous that I spent a lot of time staring at the screen in disbelief.
The main problem with the franchise is that there is zero change. No one grows. No one learns anything. All characters are static. In a good, thoughtful film, people change, grow and learn. At least someone, somewhere does. At the end of this film, all of the characters are right back where they started, doing the same things, holding the same beliefs, no better or worse off than before. I did sit through part of an episode after seeing the movie, and it's the same characters in the same clothes doing the same stupid things. It gets old fast.
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My first sweater:
1. I made a Rainbow Cake. My first attempt was made with diet pop as the recipe suggests, but that didn't work for me at all. So this time I followed the cake mix instructions and got a nice-looking, fully-baked, colourful, edible cake.
Unfortunately it is a mix, so the taste ... not that great. But it is edible. Maybe next time I'll make it from scratch. I'm just not a very good baker.
2. Saw Inglourious Basterds last weekend. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Quentin Tarantino. However, this one was over the top, even for him. It's basically a Jewish revenge fantasy, with a small group of mostly Jewish-Americans taking on the Nazis. They collect their scalps and brand the few they allow to live. There is a big film premiere in a small theatre in France, and all the Nazi big-wigs will be there. Both the Inglourious Basterds and the owner of the theatre are planning to kill Hitler, Borman, Goebbels and the rest of the top tier that night. It's well-acted, well-written and very funny in parts ... but the level of gratiutous violence was a big turn-off. I had to turn my head away more than once. In fact, I couldn't watch the climactic scene in its entirety; it really was a disturbing level of blood and mayhem, serving no obvious purpose.
3. I crocheted a fried egg.
Isn't it adorable? It's for a swap on Ravelry. It's not perfect but I like it, and I miss it already. *Sniff* Amigurumi is the bomb.
[WARNING: SPOILERS] Tried to watch Death Proof last week. We managed to get about halfway through, then gave up. It truly was a tedious, time-warping mess. Crazy guy with stuntman's car kills five drunk/high young women after the audience must spend an hour listening to them blather on and on and on in true Tarantino style. I thought for sure it was the 70s: the cars are old, the clothes are dated, the music is bizarre ... but then one of the girls starts texting. So I guess it's a 70s version of present day. At any rate, you don't know boring until you try to sit through this silliness.
I love Pulp Fiction. I love Reservoir Dogs. Even though Tarantino has disowned it, I love Natural Born Killers. I'm looking forward to seeing Inglourious Basterds once the crowds have died down. But really, the "conversations" these women have aren't even remotely interesting, and having to sit through their rambling and awful dancing for almost 60 minutes only to have them all destroyed by Kurt Russell's death-proof car was, shall was say, infuriating. That's 60 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Then, fast-forward 18 months, and it's four new victims prattling away in a car, and you know they'll end up as so many body parts strewn across the road, so you stop the DVD and save yourself from wasting any more time. The end.
Actually, one good thing came out of that film: I finished my grey afghan!
This is a film that can definitely be summed up in one sentence: A bored office drone decides to cook all of Julia Child's recipes from one of her cookbooks (524 of 'em) in 365 days, and for some reason the writers thought it would be good to throw in some vignettes of Ms. Child's life as well. It's unfortunate they simply didn't make a biography of Child and left this Julie person out of it altogether.
Meryl Streep plays a brilliant Child, even if she does go a bit overboard at times. I doubt the real Julia was so over-the-top 24/7; surely at some point she took a breath and acted like a normal human being. Still, it's a great performance by one of the most versatile actresses in Hollywood. Amy Adams, on the other hand ... she's quite the one-note performer. Granted, I haven't seen many of her films, but of those I have seen (Talladega Nights, Night at the Museum 2, and now Julie & Julia) she plays one type of character: plucky, perky, insufferable. I don't think she's a very good actress as I've yet to see her bring any sort of depth to a character. Perhaps I should rent Doubt and see if she's worth all the attention.
Yes, had this film simply followed Child's rise to fame (keeping Stanley Tucci as her husband) and completely omitted this Julie person, it would have been a very good film. As it is, there are a few laughs, but I really didn't care whether Julie could successfully debone a duck.
So I've been on vacation the last week, and it's been fantabulous. Mike was able to be off for most of my vakay so it worked out very well. We were able to check out our fair city as tourists, and we had a friend from Maine come visit!
This past week we've:
- checked out the Halifax waterfront
- shopped our butts off
- took a cruise on the Tall Ship Silva
- rented and watched season 2 of The Golden Girls (ahem)
- attended a Mennonite wedding (well, I did)
- tried to catch an abandoned kitty by my parents' building (couldn't find him)
- ate copious amounts of food at many restaurants
- went to the library for the first time in many years
- had fries at Bud the Spud
And my friend Petrea visited me from Maine! Okay, she brought her partner Steve and I brought Mike, but still. We did more touristy stuff together, like visit Pier 21, Citadel Hill and the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. We also went to a couple of pubs and wandered the waterfront. It was great fun and I was so happy to meet them!
A great time had by all. We were fortunate that the weather was lovely for most of the week. Today, my last day, we're buying groceries and moving furniture so we can have our carpets shampooed. Oh joy, oh bliss. And Buddy's going to the vet for his vaccinations. Cross fingers he doesn't get carsick during that short trip.
For me a shopping spree is anytime I buy more than one item at a time. Saturday I bought three items, therefore it was a shopping spree. My first purchase (and best, I think):