There are no words (but i did my best)

BPoT #146:

A trailer for the obscure things in your childhood.

When I was little, I absolutely adored a young reporter named Tintin. The intrepid Belgian and his fearless Scottish terrier Snowy did everything I wanted to do: fight pirates, go on archaeological digs (the exciting kind), find treasures, get captured and then cleverly break escape, and write. Unfortunately, despite being a little young for a reporter, he was a little old for me...by about 70 years or so.

The Belgian writer George Remi, aka Herge ("RG" pronounced with a french accent) had launched Tintin on the world back in between the two World Wars, starting with the French newspaper, Le Vingtieme Siecle, specifically its children's section "Le Petit Vingtieme." Now, "The Adventures of Tintin" has become a full fledged film directed by, in my opinion, the two greatest action movie directors of my life (perhaps ever), Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.

Finally seeing the theatrical trailer for a film I have waited more than half of my life for, over a decade, made my previous night even better.

http://www.tintin.com/

The fruit or the rondezvous?

BPoT #145:

Dates.

When they go well. The bad ones serve only to provide good stories years later. And I'm not talking about the fruit. Though I suppose bad fruit-dates could also be a source of weird stories. Like why the heck you had dates with in the first place. Unless you're in Egypt, but then I suppose the focus would shift to why you were in Egypt...

Anyway! Back to dates (a. as in going out and b. the good kind) are very nice. Being single has its perks, but dates are nice too. Especially when they come (and are nice) after a somewhat long period of singleness. It might be somewhat nerve-wracking, but it's kind of in a good way, and you don't have the responsibilities of a formal relationship yet. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Fun that cools you off

BPoT #144:

Water gun battles.

When it's warm enough that you can spray each other with water and not get cold, and you're in that funny mood where these things happen, it can only mean a nerf battle. I just today impulse bought two Nerf water guns because they were a $7.99 set at Marshalls, of all places. It was pretty muggy today and we needed some cooling after sitting in our living room for 2.25 hours watching HP7. The best part about it was that we were battling in the house. The not-so good part was that we had to wipe up after, but it was worth it.

Don't slam the door on your hot pirate girlfriend

BPot #143:

Seeing a movie with a friend.

It's always nice to go see a midnight premiere with a big group and have masses of people, some of which are other groups you know, but sometimes it's nice just to go see a movie on Thursday night with one good friend and laugh really loudly in the near empty theatre. Extra points if it's totally empty and you can do whatever you want.

We saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and were pleasantly surprised. It was a great improvement over the last two, which were loose stepping stones on a slippery slope down to awful. It took a couple leaves out of Curse of the Black Pearl, which was better, but noticeably similar in at least two scenes. Still, a definite improvement.

One place this movie succeeded where the last two failed was that it was more of a standalone story, much like the first one. Unlike Dead Man's Chest and At World's End, it did not try to continue a drawn out storyline eked from loose ends of the first film in order to make a trilogy. It leaves you with just enough little details that another more-or-less new storyline could be developed (evidence that a "Pirates 5" is forthcoming).

Strangely, I did not once find myself wondering where Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann and all those characters from the past three films were, a fact I find surprising in retrospect. Indeed, the only three consistent characters from the previous films were Captain Jack Sparrow, of course, along with Captain Barbossa and the portly, mutton chopped Mr. Gibbs. Standing in for Orlando Bloom in the post of muscular heartthrob was Sam Claflin, who has nothing else but looks in common with the swashbuckling Turner as his character, Philip Swift, a young missionary captured by Blackbeard.

While, on the whole, good, (a B+ I would say) there were a few points of the film's colorful fabric that varied from improbable to downright unnecessary. For one, Blackbeard, who has someone undefined magic powers, has a couple of undead crewman that serve no purpose whatsoever but to give the makeup artists something to do. The most attention they get is during one of the many sword battles of the movie; a soldier stabs one through the chest and watches in horror as the zombie pirate gruesomely draws out the blade and uses it to kill its former owner. Like I said, it hearkens back to the cursed and invulnerable pirate crew from the first film. There were a few plot points that made no significant addition except a few lines of witty banter, but this was not overwhelming, as it was in the third movie, which was entirely ruled by unnecessary explosions and witless banter.

One hopes that some of the occurrences left unexplained were done so intentionally, and will be attended to in the apparent next film. Hopefully Bruckheimer and his team have learned from their mistakes and will follow up with a new installment to the series that is at least as good as On Stranger Tides was.

Image from here (it's a good laugh).

Thanks for nothing, you useless reptile.

BPoT #142:

Adult childhood.

Some things you never grow out of. For me, it's animated movies. I bought three today. Plus Harry Potter. Overall, it was pretty nice. I hadn't bought any movies in a while, and I was looking to fatten my collection a little. So my sister and split the purchase of How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, The Emperor's New Groove and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We plan to watch them in that order too, having started with training dragons tonight. With garlic bread pizza. Fun times.

I say, dear chap, how was your trip to Zurich?

#141: AT LAST.

You know when you order something online (especially relevant if you're ordered it overseas) and you wait so long for it (months!) that you begin to wonder if it was a scam, or if it got lost or stolen? But then the moment arrives. You pour light into your mailbox and your heart jumps seeing the package with your name on it, the international post stamp in the corner. With hungry eyes and quick, trembling fingers you open it to find....(results may vary)

For a book geek like myself, few things matched the excitement of sliding One of Our Thursdays is Missing out of a bubble wrapper with a stamp that says Zurich on it. This made absolutely no sense given that the author, Jasper Fforde, is English and I won the book in competition on the website of an English newspaper, the Guardian. However, if the book that I won in March took a pitstop in Germany on its way to the states, that would explain why it arrived a week before the first day of June.

Nonetheless, I have to finish reading Peter and the Shadow Thieves first. I don't like not finishing books and starting others, (yet for a reason unknown to me, I probably have about 6 unfinished books in my inventory right now.) If I haven't mentioned it before, young adult literature is one of my weaknesses, along with bad action movies. I don't see good action movies as a weakness.

Look guys! Another blog!

BPoT #140:

Think ancient history is boring? Think again.

A while back I introduced y'all to my friend my Sara's vlog: http://www.youtube.com/user/SaradactylMichelle

Today I have a new one. There's no secret mist shrouding my love of mythology (it's like history but with magic and not boring!) but I understand that the original material is somewhat dense and dry. I don't just pick up the Odyssey for fun. But you will never get more fun out reading about myths from this blog, Myths Retold. (If you're not ok of obscene quantities of obscenities, I state in advance that I am not the creator, just the messenger.)

http://bettermyths.blogspot.com/

I gave the actual links instead of linking the blog titles because they both have pretty good url's. And fantastic content. Just sayin'.

The newest Myths Retold post is a review of sorts for Thor. Even though I knew it was going to a stellar cinematic achievement (I had read no reviews up til this point), I still hoped that Thor would have been at least enjoyable enough to see in a theatre. I hoped that despite the many liberties I knew they would take with the source myths (which already had been the victim of many liberties taken by the comic book that served as the film's source material), that the plot would still be good enough to slide you over those liberties in a way that you could at least enjoy the movie while you were there seeing and wait until you left the theatre and got in the car to start tearing it apart. Apparently I was mistaken in my hopes.

Halfway through reading this post I was thinking Thank god I didn't waste $10.50 to go see this. Later I was thinking Why would I need to even see it? I'm having more fun reading this guy sum it up while hacking it down than I would paying to see it. And then later I was laughing so much, I thought Now I really must see this movie so that I can laugh at how bad it is. There are films like that from time. Take from this what you will.

The first of we'll see how many

The BPoTw #139:

Having so much time that you have no time.

In simpler terms, it's called laziness. I theoretically should have more time than ever now that school is out, but for the only time during the whole year, the drive to be productive and efficient is lessened. This is of course because I have not yet started my summer job, and thank god I have one otherwise I'd feel like a complete and total bum, and not just a partial one. It's not good to be lazy all the time, but sometimes it's not to be able to be a little lazy. That's why this is the Best Part of The week, a new kind of post that we may see again later in the summer. It'll be kind of a test to see how many full weeks of BPoTs and how many BPoTw's there are at the end of the summer.

Film frenzy

The Best Part of Today #138:

Movies, new and old.

As my friend Sara would say, this post comes to you in two parts, or in my case two days. Yesterday I helped my sister Sara (confusing, I know) with the elementary school orchestra she teaches because she was sick, and when we got home I had about 2 hours until I had to go babysit my two year old neighbour (time spent helping my mother rather than napping.) But once I finally got the little 2 year old to sleep I had an undetermined amount of time to wait until the parents came home so I flipped on the tv to watch the second half of Tangled, my newest famous animated movie. When that was done, the parents still weren't back so I started the newest installment of the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I had not yet seen. I didn't get to finish it though, which how we get around to today. While grocery shopping for my mother (isn't she needy? :P) I rented the Narnia movie for myself and will shortly finish watching it. Excitement!

Receipt of R&R

The Best Part of Today #137:

Hotel confirmations.

Ignoring the pit in your stomach caused by exorbitant hotel prices, getting a confirmation of a future hotel stay causes butterflies to flutter around and take your focus away from the pit. It means you're going somewhere, more likely than not on vacation, for some fun, excitement shameless tourism.

My sister and I just booked 3 nights at hotel for another anime convention during the summer and I'm very excited. We went to the same one last year, and it will be interesting to see how it's different this year. Now that my sister and I know what anime conventions are like, we're hoping to sell the idea to some more friends and get them to come along with us. If that turns out well, it'll already be better than last year!

a vg epiphany

The Best Part of Today #136:

Family video game time.

Getting my whole family together at point in time is tricky, and the chances of being together long enough to do something together on any given weeknight are slimmer still. But tonight my sister and I somehow wrangled our mom and dad together to play Mario Kart Wii. Strangely, the original idea wasn't even ours. We'd suggested playing Mario Kart, but it was my mom's idea to play video games together in the first place.

My sister and I are among the odd population of girls who like video games (and don't look like we do). By this I mean we aren't tomboys who shun the ways of feminism, far from it, but rather we're girls who embrace many guy-oriented activities, I a little more than my sister but still. My dad has an appreciation for video games's design and ingenuity, and the problem solving skills required, to an extent. But, like most parents, shares the opinion that there are more worthy pleasure time pursuits. My mother has but the tiniest fraction of appreciation for video games; she normally just tolerates my sister and I playing them and starts to nag us to do other things if we play them for too long, especially if the sun is out. And yet, it was she who eagerly suggested we all play tonight. And we had a great time! I'd like to think that she saw the value in an a stimulating activity (unlike Scrabble, her slow, painful death game of choice) that could bring us all together.

For readers eyes only

The Best Part of Today #135:

A new record.

I may have said something hinting at this before, but I love to read a lot. I'm not a very fast reader though, because my incessant editing skills make me rather thorough so I can't speed through books like the people who got the latest Harry Potter and stayed up all night to read it in six hours. That's not my style. I like to digest books. Ironically, if I am in fact reading a new book and something dramatic just happened I sometime can't stop myself from jumping to the bottom of the page, the next page, or even the end of the book (though this last one is rare) to find out what happened, or to make such and such person isn't dead or so and so was able to find or accomplish something.

Last night though (or rather this morning), despite my slow reading habits, I finished my new book, which would top out this reading time at three days, a new record for me. Despite my slow habits, this was consistent with another of my habits: to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to read, and, more often, finish books. No I'm not talking about total hours spent; that would make this total reading time less than a day. Obviously I didn't spend every hour of the past three days reading this book, but I still count it as three days because I started it on Friday and finished it on Sunday, so I think it makes more sense that way, rather having to try to count u[ my hours.

The book I just finished was The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan, and I pretty much recommend anything by him. Now I'm on to the 2nd book of the Halo trilogy, The Flood. This one follows the storyline of the first Halo game, while the first book, The Fall of Reach didn't follow the Halo: Reach game so much as it provided backstory for Master Chief and the Spartan program, and their near destruction on the planet Reach, with Master chief as the sole survivor. I look forward to finishing this book, and the series; hopefully they are as good as the first one was.

Good old times

The Best Part of Today #134:

Coming home, and feeling like you never left.

After breakfast, the first thing I did on my first day back at home was take my dog on a walk. The familiarity was so pervasive that it was like the past three years had never happened, almost. I went to my favorite spot down a dirt road to a river where a tree had fallen from the far side and made a perfect perpendicular, arched bridge fairly high over the water. It's been my favorite place to dangle my legs for years, but unfortunately the years have made changes on my favorite places as well as me. My faithful bridge finally wore out and broke in half, or rathe into about 3/4 and 1/4. Of course the larger end was on the other side of the river, and in my efforts to push it back in place, I slipped into the water. I was wearing jeans and sneakers, but fortunately it was very warm today.

I tried to push using another piece of wood as leverage, but it was upriver and too heavy. I did succeed though in building another bridge by dragging a lighter piece of wood across the river and laying it on top of the heavy one. Unfortunately, anything light enough for me to drag didn't hold my weight. After doing this, I went and got the new installment in a book series I love by Rick Riordan, The Throne of Fire and read outside with a bottle of Orangina. And that's what I'm about to go do more of right now!

Nice, nice

The Best Part of Today [yesterday] #132:

May the fourth be with you.

This would have been better had I had the time to post yesterday, on May 4th, but alas, printers run out of ink at the most inopportune times. Despite the disappointment of having to spend such a wonderful day of tribute to the best science fiction movies ever studying and finishing last minute projects, it was still fun.

The Best Part of Today #133:

The cherry on top.

Whether it was an actual cherry on your cream, or that one extra part of your day that made it great, it's always good to have an extra nudge in the right direction. Mine was, in fact ice cream related. I was already happy that today was my last of school, but after my mom and I finished packing up the car, we stopped for ice cream on the way home. It made it just that little bit better.

And other sundry tips...

The Best Part of Today #131:

Short restaurant waits.

You're hungry. You've been fasting all day so that you can fully enjoy the enormous portions that restaurants make of their dishes. And you have to put your name down and wait. Those 30-45 minutes can seem like hours to your stomach, protesting more and more loudly for the lack of food. (Anything longer than an hour and I usually find a different restaurant.)

But it's such a joy when you go up to the concierge and it's either, "right this way" (score extra points for immediate sit-down) or "it'll be about 10 minutes." 10 minutes? No problem! I wanted to go to the bathroom anyway! (Girls can spend 10 minutes in bathroom; I don't know about guys.) Or that's the perfect amount of time to look at a menu before sitting down, so that you can give your meal order to your server right away when he or she asks you for drinks, and you get out of there faster!

Another fabulous tip to try out (if the restaurant will let you)...

When was the last time you had dessert after a meal at a restaurant? (and if you're above the age of at least 16). With the aforementioned potion sizes threaten to pop your buttons and snap your belts, it's no wonder that many of us haven't eaten dessert since we were still eating kids meals. But the way to go is to either eat only half of your entree and take the rest home so that you have room for dessert and a good lunch for tomorrow, or ask for you dessert to go. This way you have time to work off your meal on your way back home, and then you can enjoy a restaurant quality dessert in your comfy pj's and bed, and you don't have to worry about getting whipped cream on your face, or struggle with a fork to eat an ice cream sandwich that would be so much more easily eaten with your hands.

Happy eating!

One tall cinnamon dolce latte, and a complimentary grande mocha

The Best Part of Today #130:

Nice baristas.

Ever been to a Starbucks in New York? They are mean. I don't mean to spread generalizations, but I have never been to a New York City Starbucks and come away with a positive attitude about the baristas. Sure, in general they're serving drinks all day to people who can afford starbucks and that can get on your nerves day after day. But that doesn't mean they have to be mean to those of us who are just regular people treating ourselves to a nice flavored coffee drink.

That's why today's post is about nice baristas in coffee shops everywhere, but specifically the ones my starbucks at school. They are the nicest baristas, and just generally nice people because you can tell most of them are probably students or at least locals. The best part, though, is that when someone double order by mistake and there are unclaimed drinks on the bar, the baristas let anyone take for free, instead of dumping them down the drain and wasting them (which I've seen happen elsewhere). Nothing says customer service like getting more than you paid for.