Pornotherapy - Birthday, YAY

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September 17th, 2007

02:06 pm

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Birthday, YAY
I had more of a Birthday weekend, which is rather fabulous. Friday my friend Joe, who has the second coolest day job in this post, took me to D-wars. Joe is Mr. Animal - you know, they guy who shows up at schools with all sorts of bizarre critters and lets the children torture them? That's my pal Joe. His work menagerie is two tarantulas, a bearded dragon and some snakes. He wanted to see D wars and realized I'm the only friend "geeky enough to agree to see it". Yay?

It was wonderfully bad, everything you could possibly want from a movie about a giant snake trashing Downtown and Silverlake: flashbacks inside flashbacks inside flash-forwards, dangling plot(?!) lines and massive exposition in ...Korean. My absolute favorite scene was the perfectly earnest, "Joey, do you like gladiator movies" bit when Robert Forster ~~ohgodhowdidyougettalkedintomakingthis~~ faked a heart attack/paid random child's ne're-do-well father $1000 to leave the boy with him so that he could ~~molest him~~ tell him he's the chosen one and dress him up in gaudy jewelry.

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But the badness of THAT scene was really almost beaten out (seriously, it was close, but in the end the creepiness of the almost pedo-trying-to-be-Spielberg tipped the scale) by the absolutely random "there's a giant snake with an army of ninja's trying to kill you! Wait, lets go to a psychiatrist and have your dreams analyzed!" episode. Not only did the shrink have no set-up (which was par for Dwars), it didn't lead anywhere, it made absolutely no sense AND then just *ended*. It was this entirely random filler. Then the snake was attacking again, and there were ninjas. Ninjas and a giant snake were the film makers answer to pretty much ever question: need to set up the romance? Ninjas attack and they kiss! Who is this weird old man? There are Ninjas! And Snakes! How do we get from Silverlake to Downtown -- and then to a magic cave in Korea? NINJAS AND SNAKE!!!

I would bet drinks that half the scenes made the final cut under the; "well we shot it lets paste it in somewhere" rule.

All in all, I LOVED this movie for it's badness. It probably helped that we had a few beers first, but I recommend it to drunk movie goers everywhere! Joe has been sending me "beware the bad Imoogi" texts for the last two days.

Saturday a friend of mine who works over at Scott family production office invited me for lunch or "to drink Ridley's private wine of Ridley's private balcony" - the novelty of that was too good to pass up, so of course I went. Unfortunately, Ridley was having a meeting of said balcony, and no doubt drinking said wine, so I got a rain check and we went to the Abby for a few drinks and then to Bin 8495 for dinner. We tried the tasting / wine paring menu, "as exotic as you can make it". I'll try anything once. We ended up with the Rockefeller (oyster & caviar wrapped in a crepe with an Uni foam), Frog legs in a light curry,

sea bass cooked tableside on a salt tablet with quail egg asparagus & shaved truffles, a lamb scallop thing with a chorizo foam (what IS it with the foams guys? It's like Top Chef two seasons ago), foie gras, a cheese plate and churros with a chipotle chocolate.
...yeah. WOW.

Then for my birthday Sunday, L made me breakfast (although since I grew 90% of the ingredients I think it's fair to call it a joint effort). I spent the afternoon puttering in my garden - I picked up some new exotic herbs at the farmers market along with some standards like thyme & basil that needed to be replanted. L picked me up at 6 and drove me to Long Beach.

One of my quirks is that I love boats. Any kind, really - but boats without engines are my favorite. L remembered, and booked us on a Gondola ride through the canals around treasure island.

...To be honest I was a little leery at first. The whole thing screamed kitschy romance, and I've never been one for chocolate in heart shaped boxes or stuffed creatures won at fair-grounds. The Gondola *was* that kitsch - very Disney ride-esque. Complete with a Yo ho Pirate! stationed at the entrance to "treasure" Island.

But it was also a boat, out on the canals at sunset, so it was all good.

Here's the boathouse - that would be L talking to our Gondolier. Yes, he had a straw hat with a ribbon.

L brought a wine he'd been saving for a few years - he's a bit of a hoarder when it comes to wine - and real stemware because he's a snob like that, and we headed across the Alamitos Bay towards Naples.

The Keeping up with the Jones's row of stinkpots on steroids.

Cheers!

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Comments

From:	waltraute
Date:	September 17th, 2007 09:19 pm (UTC)

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I had the "Come ON, don't you want to get drunk and go see this???" discussion over a newspaper ad for D-Wars, just the other Friday.

Yet to find anyone who will go with. :(

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From:	oulangi
Date:	September 17th, 2007 09:27 pm (UTC)

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It might be easier to get them drunk first and then suggest going to it. Tell them about the giant snake's amazing size changing ability! It fluctuates between a 200 foot snake to a good 2000 feet according to scene needs!