Bewitched

Tonight we saw Bewitched. We had high hopes for this movie, especially since the show is Cindy's favorite show of all time. Boy werw we disappointed. Rather than actually make a movie based on the TV show, they made a movie about the making of a remake of the TV show but the woman they get to play Samantha is really a witch. The problem is that the movie didn't really have much of a plot - it was just a jumble of many things that happened with no real theme or sense of what it wanted to say or the story it wanted to tell. Many times throughout, I found myself wondering where it could possibly be going. There was a subplot about another actress being a witch that just trailed off and was never resolved. Uncle Arthur appeared - he was a character on the old TV show and appeared as a real warlock in this movie (I think?). Will Farrell's character was openly wondering about what he was and what was going on - the answers were never clear and that whole sequence didn't make a lick of sense. Bottom line - this movie sucked. The only good part about it was the casting. Nichole Kidman was a perfect Samantha; Will Farrell was a perfect Darrin. Had they actually done a Bewitched movie and not this crap, they would have been wonderful. My score - 2/10. Best line in the movie - "You, you be quiet or I'll give you a tail!"

random

What a random night.

I went to happy hour, which apparently started a bit before usual. After some good food and drinks, we decided to go swimming. One of Columbia's pools has a new waterslide that not many of us had been down. So we drove over there, stopped off to get suits. That slide was fun! It shot you out of it so fast it was awesome. I did jam my foot trying to go down once and boy does it hurt now. :( Anyway, the slide was ALOT of fun.

From there it was to a different pool to soak in the hot tub for a while. After enjoying that, it was off to the older, indoor, waterslide. We raced down the slides a couple times (these are enclosed slides that are much longer than the newer, outdoor, one) and then went off the diving board a couple of times.

From there it was off to Fridays for last night happy hour. :) A couple drinks and food later, it's time for bed. What a wacky Friday night.

movies

This weekend we saw two movies (we're trying to catch up on our backlog).

On Friday night we saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The premise of this movie is pretty simple - a couple (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) both have double lives as assassins. They are both assigned to kill the same person, find out about each other, and then try to kill each other. They figure out that they're both being played and then must work together to save their lives. This movie was pretty good. I was quite tired upon seeing it (the movie was around 11pm and I had a tough day so I was exhausted) but it was good. My score - 7/10.

On Saturday night, we saw Batman Begins. Talk about a great movie. This was definately the best Batman movie of all time and I think it was clearly the best superhero movie of the recent past. Finally we get a Batman movie that's pretty true to the story and is quite dark, as opposed to the campy movies that Joel Schulmacher brought us. The movie was downright scary at points and Christian Bale does a great job exploring the mind of Bruce Wayne and what makes him Batman. This is, easily, my favorite movie of the summer so far and I honestly don't know how anything else could beat it. My score - 9.5/10.

Buffett!

So after multiple years of trying to get tickets to see Jimmy Buffett through Ticketmaster, I broke down and bought a set off eBay this year. So yesterday, me and Cin were off to see Jimmy at the Nissan Pavillion in Virginia. There's two parts to this.

First there was the concert. Jimmy Buffett was, as he always has been whenever I've seen him (this was my fourth concert), awesome. He did all the songs you'd expect him to do plus a couple that I have never heard him do live which totally rocked (such as Last Mango in Paris, easily the number three Buffett song of all time). The crowd was really into the show (duh) and you can tell that Jimmy still loves what he does. It was Cindy's first Buffett concert and she really enjoyed the show too. So the show itself gets a 9/10 (points off due to the lack of Migration being played).

Nissan Pavillion is a different story. We left Columbia at 5.20pm. We got into a parking space at 8.35pm. The should have been a 50 minute trip if there was no traffic and we did the speed limits the whole way. Part of this was normal evening traffic (parking lot like) on the Capitol Beltway. But once we got onto I-66 it cleared up and we did great. Then we got close. There are two ways into Nissan off I-66; both involve going a small way on a local highway and then turning onto Wellington Road. This is a one lane in each direction road and we moved about 1 foot every minute. We were stuck on this road for over an hour (for three miles!) and we enjoyed (!!) the first two songs on Wellington Road. Who designs a pavillion that big (over 25,000 people) and has a one-lane road as the only access point? There is one description for such a person - an incompetant engineer, plain and simple.

Once we turned into the Pavillion we drove over 3/4 of a mile to our parking "spot" - so called because it was just a place on a field. We speedwalked that 3/4 mile to the entrance and finally went in right when Jimmy was finishing his fourth song (we missed Changes in Latitudes... - damn). I gave up on the non-moving beer line and we made our way up the stairs to the lawn. We then enjoyed the concert and even got some beers, which made us both much happier. :) We did get in line at a beer stand and right when we got close were informed that they were running out of beer and we'd have to go elsewhere - good planning there, Nissan Pavillion.

The rest of the concert went great. We had a good time. Until we tried to leave. We sat in our car, without moving from the spot, for over two hours. Yes, two hours. This is largely a symptom of the crappy road access to the pavillion, but still very annoying. Again, whoever designed this place and the VDOT support to it ought to be fired as they are not even qualified to design an on-ramp much less road support to a major concert venue. We finally got home at 1.30am. Yes, 1.30am after the concert ended at 11.00pm. Overall score for Nissan Pavillion - 1/10 (they get one point for having reasonably priced beer that was very cold and delicious).

What did I learn?
(1) Jimmy still does an awesome concert.
(2) Whoever designed the roads in/out of Nissan Pavillion is not a competant engineer.
(3) Next time we see Buffett, we will not be going to Nissan. Since he no longer does Merriweather Post Pavillion, we will most likely fly to another city to see him. Probably Vegas. I would rather spend $200 on flights to do that then to be subjected to the traffic and parking situtation at Nissan again.
(4) Barring that, we will both take off work the day of the concert and get there around 1.00pm next time. This will provide a front parking spot and easy access out of there after the concert.

Chesapeake Bay Swim (and dinner)

Cindy did the Chesapeake Bay Swim this weekend. Well, there's really two events - the official swim which is the from west side to the ease side totallying 4.4 miles - and the "challenge" which is on the east side of the bridge and totals 1.1 miles. Cin did the challenge which was really hard onto itself. She finished 68th out of over 450 total swimmers which totally rocked.

The swims ended on the east side of the Bay Bridge at a restaurant calling Hemingway's. When the swim ended Sunday we both decided we should give this place a try, so we ended up going there yesterday (Tuesday). It was VERY nice. We sat on the porch overlooking the bay and the bridge. The food was outstanding. Cindy had the best salmon she ever had and I had a crabcake and filet that very both excellent. The food was a little pricey but worth every penny. Highly recommended.

Happy Birthday in Federal Hill

Last weekend, we went out to Federal Hill in Baltimore for a friend of mine's birthday. We started off going to the Sky Lounge & Tango Tapas bar. This place was cool - the downstairs had alot of very comfortable couches and puffy chairs and it was quite relaxing. The upstairs was OK but very crowded and loud. They specialize (drinkwise) in martinis (I think) - they had a large selection of speciality drinks, plus good old beer standbyes.

The second (and last) place we went was MaGerk's which is a traditional bar with lots of loud music and dancing. This place was packed - it was very difficult to move from anywhere to anywhere - at one point we stood on the stairs attempting to go up for about five minutes. Anyway that was pretty good but a little more crowded than I would have liked. :)

It was a good time. I really like Federal Hill. Oh, and to Jayme, happy birthday.

Kenny Chesney (and friends)

Today me, Cin, Mo, and Matt, went to the Kenny Chesney concert at FedEx field in DC. This was much less of a concert and much more of an all-day music festival. The concert started at 4.30pm. We got there around 3.45pm and after driving through a mile or so of parking lots, we found a place to park. FedEx field has the largest set of parking lots I have ever seen. After a short walk, we headed up and found our seat ... the very top row of the stadium directly facing the stage. Right under my seat ran a concrete separation joint, indicating me and being directly in the center of the stadium, facing the stage. Being on the top row wasn't all that great as there were two fences separating me from falling off - granted you couldn't see through them very well (but you could!), but still not my first choice of seating.

The concert started right at 4.30p with Uncle Kracker (my favorite of all of the performers). He did a short (30 minutes) set which rocks - I do like my music alot. Then, after a 20 minute break, we had Pat Green - I only knew one song of his (Wave on Wave) but he was pretty good. He was on for about 30 minutes as well. Then came Gretchen Wilson, who was quite good. She did alot of new stuff and then did a one-song encore, I'm Here for the Party (she finished with the Redneck Woman song). Gretchen was on for about 45. minutes. Next up was Keith Urban. I'm not a big Keith Urban fan so I was a little unhappy that he stretched his set out to an hour and fifteen minutes (including a 15 minute cover of Tom Petty's Free Fallin'). I didn't realize how many of his songs I knew, but that makes sense as that all sound very similar to each other. After this set, Kenny Chesney finally came on (around 9.15p - almost five hours after the concert started!). He was pretty good and did one song each with Keith Urban, Gretchen Wilson, and Uncle Kracker. Then he brought out Sammy Hagar (you may remember him as being David Lee Roth's replacement as the lead singer of Van Halen - IMHO, he was the downfall of that band). They did three songs together and then around 11.00p, Chesney's set ended. He did two songs as an encore, the last of which is the She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy song which I really like.

We actually left our seats between the two encore songs and were walking down the escalators when Tractor ended. We got to our car and then spent a good 45 minutes or so in traffic (FedEx field parking and traffic sucks. They didn't plan this well. It is a VERY poorly designed parking lot and the folks that were "directing" traffic were quite inept). All that and I had almost no gas (gas light on the whole time) and we were sitting idling in traffic. So we finally got out, got gas, dropped Mo and Matt off, and then headed home, long since abandoning our plans to go out to dinner.

So, the concert was quite good. We paid alot for this - the $25 tickets we had were doubled in cost by Ticketmaster "service charges" and each ticket had a $8 parking fee on it - the parking at that place isn't worth $0.08, much less $32 (since there were four of us in the truck). We did easily get our money - one concert ended up with five acts and an unannounced guest (Sammy Haggar). The seats weren't great but they were not bad either - we had a great view of the stage and the entire stadium. We saw other friends of ours there, who ended up sitting one section over and a couple rows down. The music selection was good and very enjoyable (although the audio mixing and balancing was not very good). The parking and logistics sucked. Finally, I think I would have enjoyed Kenny Chesney's set more if it wasn't so late. I was not expecting a seven hour concert and I think having four opening acts was too much. While they were all good, it made the concert too long and at the end I was very tired and didn't enjoy it nearly as much as it they had left one of the openers out. But, the concert was good. We all had a good time and the extended playlists made the ticket price well worth it and led to a very relaxing experience.

this blog...

I'm intended this to be a companion to the travel log - full of ramblings about things that happen that are worth commenting on but aren't really travel. I have no idea how often I'll update this (hopefully alot as alot of interesting things happen to me - well interesting to me at least).