Weekend Recap

This past weekend was pretty good for the ole Bryster. On Friday night, I took my buddies Rockstar and the Reverend to a party for a friend of mine that I knew back in Chicago. It was a St. Patty’s Day / Housewarming / Birthday party. But I kind of forgot that it was her birthday until we got there and people kept wishing her a happy birthday. I felt like a dick. But I made up for it by taunting her that she was going to get back together with her ex-boyfriend. I am so great at parties. If you want a guest that completely alienates themselves from most of the other people within minutes of meeting them, I’m your guy.

Saturday was uneventful. I watched a couple of movies and college basketball until about 9 pm when the Reverend and my other friend Clark came over to play Halo at Rockstar’s place next door. I did some laundry earlier in the day and there was only one dryer that was available. I was 90% sure that it was the dryer that I used a couple of months ago that didn’t work correctly. For some reason the heater is broken on it, so your clothes just get spun in cold air, thus never drying. But since it was the only one available, I used it. Sure enough an hour later I came down and the dryer had not worked. All of the other dryers were occupied still and I was just going to leave my clothes in the dryer until one of the other ones opened up. But the acting building manager, Peter, came down to switch his laundry. He asked me if I was using the dryers and I told him that I used one that is broken. He has only been helping out in our building for a couple of weeks so he didn’t know about it. He asked me if I wanted to use it again just to make sure. I said that I was now 100% sure that the dryer was broken and didn’t want to use another 75 cents on it. He told me that he would give me the 75 cents to try it again. So I took his three quarters and started chit chatting with him about the building and stuff and I was not paying attention so I put the 3 quarters into the same machine that already was drying stuff. I realized my problem and so did Peter when I yelled out “Oh, shit I put them in the wrong one.” Peter took out his wallet and apologized that he did not have another 3 quarters to give me. I felt bad that I had wasted his quarters so I took out 3 quarters of my own and put them into the dryer that I knew did not work. Then I had to pay another 3 quarters to get my clothes dried when another dryer opened up later. That’s how a simple dry cost me $2.25, plus 75 cents of Peter’s money.

Halo was a lot of fun. We try to do it a couple of times a month. Basically it used to be just me, Rockstar, and the Reverend, but since Clark has moved here, he has joined us. We sit around for about 5 hours and drink beer and scream and kill each other. Nice way to relax on a Saturday evening.

Sunday was pretty much the same. I watched a movie, went to a new grocery store that I am pretty happy with and then went to my second show at the improv theater I have been taking classes at. A review of my show will be forthcoming.


Here are some quick movie reviews of movies I have watched recently.


Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow:
This movie came and went in the theaters rather quickly. It takes place in sort of a comic book 1940’s. If you every watched old science fiction / adventure movies or television shows from the 50’s, you would enjoy this. I would hesitate to call it an animated movie, because all of the actors are real, but they shot everything against a green screen and animated everything else around them. Rooms, cities, vehicles, landscapes, everything is computer generated. But it is not the usual computer generated images; it is some sort of new process that the director came up with. It gives the movie a whole different look and feel to it. Having said that, I really enjoyed this movie. I love movies like Indiana Jones, the Phantom and The Rocketeer. Sky Captain reminded me a lot of those movies. If you like this type of movies, or are in a mood to try something different I recommend this movie.

Alien vs. Predator
They titled this movie AvP to make it cooler. No matter what they titled it you can’t escape what a big piece of shit this movie really is. If you are a fan of either genre of creature, stay away from this movie. Some of the action scenes have neat special effects but it was not enough to keep me from hating this movie from about 30 minutes into it. I watched the “making of” documentary on the extra features and figured out why I hated it so much. The writer director of the movie is Paul W.S. Anderson. Now don’t confuse him with Paul Thomas Anderson who wrote and directed Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love. This Paul W.S. Anderson has made such craptacular movies like Event Horizon and Soldier. This guy should not be allowed to ruin any more movies. If you want to watch it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Iron Giant
This is an animated movie directed by Brad Bird, who just won an Oscar for “The Incredibles”. I LOVED this movie. It is about a little boy named Hogarth who discovers a big robot in the woods behind his house in Maine. When you were a kid, if you ever wanted to have a robot for a friend or have something unbelievable happen to you, you will like this movie. It is not a musical, but it does have a lesson to the movie that might not appeal to every adult. I recommend this movie to anyone that has a child around 8-10 years old, or can remember what it was like to be a child. You wont be disappointed.

The Straight Story
Some movies are so loud in both sound and visuals that you have a hard time remembering what the story of the movie is. “The Straight Story” is exactly the opposite of a loud movie. It is a really simple story about a 73-year-old man who lives in rural Iowa and his trip to visit his sick brother who he hasn’t spoken to in 10 years. Because he can’t see too well, and he is used to doing things on his own, he ends up driving his lawn mower across the state to make it there. In one sense it is a road trip movie, but it is so much more than that. You find out a lot about this man as he trip progresses. All of the questions you have during the movie are answered in there own time. It is a slow movie, not rushing to get to the point of the trip or to see if he makes it to his brother. It takes its time and just lets you follow the story. Richard Farnsworth is the main character and he was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. Watching it, I felt like the movie had more of an impact on me because it was Richard Farnsworth’s last performance. He committed suicide a little while after it came out because he had a terminal disease. I highly recommend this movie.

So there are some movie recommendations for you out there. I may just have a weekly movie review entry since I watch about 5 movies a week, but I may keep them in the weekend recap entry as well.