Hot Rod and Space Chimps...

I just finished the movie starring Andy Sandberg called "Hot Rod". In the movie, a guy named, Rod, has always been trying to do stunts to emulate his deceased Dad, who used to set up stunts for Evel Kenieval. He rides around on his moped in a stunt suit wearing a fake mustache and generally fails at every jump he tries.

All that changes when his step-Dad, Frank, who Rod longs to beat the crap out of, is stricken with a heart defect diagnosis and needs a transplant, which the family can't afford. Rod resolves to do a big jump that even Evel couldn't do to raise money for the operation so he can get Frank better so he can kick his ass.

The premise is funnier than the movie. To be fair, it has some hilarious sequences that make little sense in a logical movie, but feel at home here. Like when he finds out that Frank is dying before he can kick his ass, he goes to his 'happy place' in the forest and proceeds to dance verbatim the Kevin Bacon construction site solo dance from Footloose. Things like that are sprinkled through this movie.

The movie stars Sissy Spasek as Rod's mother. Bill Hader and Danny McBride appear as his two buddies. Will Arnett plays a rich jerk that is dating Rod's secret crush, played by Isla Fisher of Wedding Crashers.

I was asking my brother, Bill, if he had seen this movie, but he had not.

"But I've seen Space Chimps!" he said, which also starred Andy Sandberg as the voice of the lead chimp whose grandfather had been the first chimp in space.



I laughed because Space Chimps is not awful, but it's really kind of embarrassing to watch. It had some definite potential, but it's as if they stopped trying halfway through and just tried to shove it out in time for Summer. Want proof? Rent the movie. You'll notice that the first part of the movie, which takes place in the space training camp for the chimps is fairly detailed and had some good jokes. Then there is the second part, which is set on a distant planet. It's one of the ugliest planets that I've ever seen. It's as if the programmers showed the pre-rendered version of the planet's surface and when told how long it would take to render with effects like textures, shading and what not, the producers on the film balked and told them to cut some corners. That is how ugly the planet looks.



The "villain", and I'm using that term very loosely here, is voiced by Jeff Daniels. Yes, that Jeff Daniels. He's hardly recognizable playing the incredibly annoying, effeminate and high-pitched alien, Zartog, who finds a piece of space equipment that made it to his planet and is using it to torture and terrorize the residents of the planet. All of whom look like squishy, shiny aliens crossed with gummy bears. The chimps make it through space and apparently the last bit of rendered graphics and make it to the ugly planet. Once there, they encounter a helpful glowing creature that screams a lot and looks like a running boob. And when I say a boob, I mean it looks like just that.

I saw this the first time at our really crappy dollar theater on West Center. I took Julia to it and was treated to a constant buzzing from the arcane speaker system. The movie looked like absolute crap because it was grainy and scratched from the constant showings. Turns out, DVD does it no justice. It looks bad...

Top Story: Chinese food befuddles old couple. News at 11.

A new chain restaurant just opened in our neighborhood, Panda Express. When we first saw it being build, Laura thought that it would be a Wendy's because it had a Wendy's color and shape. Soon it had a sign up announcing the new Panda Express restaurant.

I had been meaning to try Panda Express, but I just hadn't had the right opportunity because Laura generally doesn't go for Chinese food and Julia has never tried it. So if I want it, I have to go and get it alone.

The other night provided a perfect opportunity for me to get it. Julia and I had been coming home from a school function, and Laura was at work, which provided me the opening I was waiting for.

I told Julia we'd get her meal at Burger King after I got mine, so we stopped at Panda Express first. The drive in wasn't working yet, so we had to run in. Immediately, it was as if I hit a brick wall decorated with indecisive old people.

There was a couple there that appeared to be in their early 60s or late 50s. Either way, it was clear from the start that they had never ever set foot in a Chinese restaurant before. The woman behind the glass was explaining the process which is simple enough. If you order a 2 dish entree, you choose one of four "sides", which include fried rice, steamed rice, noodles and something else. Then you choose two of the main dishes to go with it.

They were startled by the myriad of choices in that they had never seen any of these dishes before. The next several minutes consisted of one or both asking, "What is this?" or "What does this taste like?" Pretty much any and all dishes had to be explained to the couple. I tried not to look at them. Instead, I was just looking slightly up and sometimes back at the menu board.

I looked down at Julia, who was clinging to my leg and placing her head on my stomach in utter boredom. She said, "Let's go!" in a whisper.

I explained that I still hadn't ordered and that she was just going to have to be patient.

It was at this moment that the wife turned and said to me, "I'm sorry that you have to wait for us."

I smiled and lied, "Oh, it's no bother."

Finally, they had decided that they were going to get started, but soon enough, there was a snag. The wife had just told the woman behind the glass that she wanted rice for her side. Just as she was scooping up steamed rice and placing it on her plate, the husband asked incredulously, "Since when is rice considered a side?"

Now I can understand maybe why he was confused. To be fair, their use of the term 'side' is more like calling it the bed of the dish. It's generally what the Chinese food rests on in most restaurants.

Finally, they started to get going, but when I finally got my say in my first side, I had hit another snag. The couple was stuck in the second half of the food tables. They again started to ask what every dish was like, what crab rangoon was, and what egg rolls were.

Julia at this point was about to exit this world from boredom that was fatal. Again she asked to leave and again I had to remind her that I had not yet gotten my food. She sighed and moaned, "I'm so hungry!"

"Well, if you only ate Chinese food, we'd be in the right place."

I got to go around the couple since they were holding up the whole line. I paid and motioned for Julia to come.

"Finally!" Julia exclaimed.

Watched 'Zach and Miri Make a..."

I just watched the newest Kevin Smith film called Zach and Miri Make a Prono. I'm purposely misspelling the title so it doesn't get stopped by internet filters. A lot of chain stores stocked it with just the title of 'Zach and Miri', which is shown above.

Kevin Smith is the guy who directed Clerks, Mallrats (loved it), Chasing Amy (meh), Dogma (loved), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (loved) and Clerks II (very good).

His movies are generally dialogue driven with a lot of character back and forth. Usually, there's a lot of cursing and a lot of vulgar discussions. In Zach and Miri, Zach, played by Seth Rogan, and Miri, played by Elizabeth Banks, are two friends who, on the eve of their high school reunion (in the middle of winter for some reason), find their utilities turned off. In danger of getting thrown in the poor house and realizing that they haven't done anything of value, Zach gets the bright idea to shoot an adult movie to pay off their debts due to the fact that all the people they went to high school would probably buy it.

They scrap together a coffee shop co-worker as the producer, a hockey goalie as the camera man, and get some enthusiastic locals to be in the picture with them. The original idea is a Star Wars rip-off, but bad luck occurs the night before shooting and they are forced to shoot in the coffee shop.

The main conflict in the movie is 'Are Zach and Miri going to follow through on their love scene?' and 'Will it ruin their friendship?'

It has some big laughs here and there, but I would only recommend it to people that are not offended by some very raunchy humor in places.

Water world

Water World in Denver was pretty fun. It's the largest water park in the country and features many speed slides and raft rides.

On the web site for Water World, you could rent a cabana for the day. The cabana has a table and chairs, free wi-fi internet if you have a laptop, a cooler with ice and two sun chairs.

Laura insisted, for her sanity since she hates crowds, that we rent one. For an extra 99 dollars, you could also get the deluxe cabana purchase, which included 5 rental tubes, a fan, some meals, 10 drinks and various other things. I crunched the numbers and opted not to get the deluxe cabana since you are allowed to bring your own drinks in as long as they are sealed, so that was covered. I then checked the prices of the food stands next to the cabanas and they weren't that expensive either.

When we got there, we were met at our cabana by 'Bill' and 'Ted', our cabana boys. 'Bill' was our main cabana boy, but 'Ted' was tagging along until 2 in the afternoon. It was immediately funny to us that they both looked like unshaven stoners, which was quite the contrast from the rest of the staff, which were shaven at least.

'Bill' told us the basics of the cabana, which wasn't much, and handed us a "menu" of five items.

He said in a stoner droll, "You can order these off the menu, and I'll bring them to you. Or... you can just walk over there (points at the food stands across the way) and get it yourself for a lot cheaper."

We opted to walk across and get it ourselves.

Laura spent some time sunning herself and reading while Julia and I did some rides and reported that she was quite entertained by 'Bill' and 'Ted' walking by periodically to check on the cabanas.

The first slide we went on was just up the hill from us. It was a pretty conventional slide that was fairly tall with several hills. I went down first. I was moving so fast by the time I hit the home stretch toward the bottom that I was literally afraid I wasn't going to slow down in time before I ran out of room at the end. Thankfully, it did.

I got up to watch Julia's plummet and kind of laughing to myself about it. She was NOT going to like this.



She slid down. I could tell that she was trying to slow down because she had her legs spread wide. She got to the bottom, got up and said, "I am never going on that again! It's so scary!"

So for the rest of the day, Julia, Laura and I settled for rides that were fairly benign. Usually, they involved getting a small inner tube and going down a fairly speedy twisting and turning water track. We went on those quite a few times.

The first time we went on a tube ride like that, we didn't know which way to start from. We thought we saw where to go, but when we got to where the ride started, we saw no inner tubes. Instead, we saw a kid standing under a sun shade guarding some red inner tubes. We didn't see any other people walking toward the ride with red tubes. They were carrying tan inner tubes.

I asked the girl there, "What are these tubes for?"

"These are our valet inner tubes. You get a wrist band when you buy the valet service and you don't have to carry a tube up the hill."

"How much does that cost?" I asked.

"22 dollars."

Ouch.

Most people looked like they opted to save the money and just carry up the inner tubes.

This wasn't as easy as it looked.

We walked back down to the start of the line, if there was one, and picked up an inner tube. It was fairly heavy. I consider myself decently strong, and yet I was having a hard time carrying these things up the hills. A lot of the time, it was just me and Julia. Considering Julia is only 8 years old, I didn't get a lot of help out of her. I started to sing slavery songs as I was carrying the tubes up the hills to get to the top of the ride.

I started to think that they were wasting some good free labor at Water World. They could stop people who were walking up the hill anyway and make they carry something else up to the top.

By the end of the day, I thought my calves were going to fall off. For days, the very act of walking became an ordeal. I thought I was going to scream every time I stood up.

Julia really enjoyed Water World. She especially liked a ride called "Lost River of the Pharoahs", which was a multi-person raft ride in the dark with all sorts of ancient Egyptian-like effects and decorations. We also liked one called "Voyage to the Center of the Earth" which has the story of a construction crew accidentally poking a hole in a big warp in the Earth's crust that leads to dinosaurs. It had some decent thrills, especially when the strobe lights hit and I couldn't tell which way we were sliding.

One of the things we tried was "The Wave" which was a dual 30 mile per hour wave pool that simulated surfing on a body board. I saw some people trying it and it didn't look that hard to me.

You take one of the body boards and you kind of fall into the wave from the top. You can either enter on your stomach or you can enter on your knees. I chose to enter on my knees. The next thing I knew, I had flipped over and was thrown around the wave to the end. I felt like my body had been twisted in several different directions.

I got up, pulled the wedgie out of my bottom and looked up to see Laura laughing her head off at me. Even Julia was laughing at me.



I decided though, that I wanted to try it again. I walked back with the body board to the top of the wave and the life guard said to me, "This time, I think you're going to want to lay on your stomach."

"Thanks," I muttered.

I managed to get through this try without wiping out.



Later, Julia said that she wanted to try it. She was pretty nervous trying it out. A few of the surfers who had basically camped out there all day were giving her tips. One man was telling her to hold onto the sides tight. Some teenage girls near the ride were yelling encouragements of "You go girl!" and "You can do it!"

Julia fell into the wave on her stomach and managed to get ride the wave without wiping out.

The teenage girls cheered for her. Julia was excited that not only had she made it without wiping out, but she also loved that the girls cheered for her.

Before we left that day, we all applied sun screen. I had urged everyone to put it on every 90 minutes or so, which Julia and I did. Laura, on the other hand, refused because she wanted to get some sun.

I tried to reason with her because we go through this all the time. Laura has very fair skin, and it doesn't take much sun for her to turn from shiny whiteness to shiny redness befitting a boiled lobster.

When she refused to put on the sunscreen, I said, "Here's how this is going to end. 'I hurrrrt! Owww! Rub some Aloe on me!'"

I mimicked Laura every time she gets too burned. It looks bad when she finally gets out of the sun and then it starts to get worse and worse as it reddens even more and then gets blisters on part of the skin, which I'm sure is very healthy for her.

When we left Water World, it was with this same problem. We got back to the hotel and Laura felt sick. It was as if she had a fever. She had the chills, but at the same time felt hot and begged me not to turn off the air conditioner.

I kept saying to her, "Gee, who was it that was predicting this was going to happen? Oh yeah, it was me!"

"Shut up!" she moaned.

I didn't escape unscathed, either. I had some mysterious rashes in several private places. There were the two long red rash streaks on my inner thighs from all the walking. Also, there were squared shaped scabs from where my mesh-lined shorts had constricted. It looked like I had been punched in the trunk by someone I was so bruised. To top it off, my back was burned. I didn't think I was burned because of my front, but when I took a shower, I felt the burn.

The day ended on kind of sad note, though. A man drowned in the large wave pool that Julia and I had swam in several times that day, which was right in front of the cabana area.

I had walked over to the locker room at 5:30 to change close before the park closed at 6 pm. As I walked out of the locker room, there were medical personnel running around and lifeguards were ushering people away from the wave pool area. I walked around the area to get back to the cabana and noticed that there were people huddled around the other side of the pool from our cabana. Laura informed me that while I was in the locker room, the lifeguards had pulled a man out of the water. She said the man's face was gray and when they turned him on his side, water and foam oozed out of his mouth. They performed CPR on him for a long while before the ambulance took him away. We found out a few days later in the paper and on several Colorado news web sites that the man had died.

Watched the Ruins....

Maybe I'm just jaded. Maybe I'm just so desensitized with horror films that I just can't get scared anymore. There are exceptions to that rule, of course. I remember seeing the Ring and getting freaked out. The first Grudge picture had some moments. I do remember getting so freaked out by the movie Witchboard when I was in college that I had to turn on every light in the house until someone finally came home. The Exorcist really freaked me out because it gave me the impression that I could fall asleep one night and wake up possessed. The Amityville Horror kind of freaked me out because I kept expecting to see lights go on by themselves and voices yelling at me to get out. The getting-shot-in-your-sleep way of dying shown in the movie freaked me out. I think I have a phobia about things happening to you while you sleep.

I'm not really sure what The Ruins had in mind in terms of scares, though. The film starts with some pretty people (Note to Hollywood. Enough with the pretty people in these films! I find myself hoping they die after enduring their spoiled-kid acting. Also, let's not make them so spoiled.) There are two women, the pretty blond and the kind of complaining, slightly nerdy brunette. The two guys can be narrowed down to the guy who wants to be a doctor and the guy with the beard. They meet a German guy, who suggests they all go on this hike to meet up with his brother, who was checking out some Mayan ruins. He hadn't heard from him in a few days. Spoilers are ahead, but you probably won't care.

So of course, they go to the Ruins. This is part of the problem. It's supposed to look like it's in the middle of a remote part of the jungle, but instead, it looks like it's right behind a well-traveled road. They get to the ruins, which looks like a small pyramid covered with vegetation. The brunette starts snapping pictures while everyone starts arguing with a local that's yelling at them. Anybody with a brain would be able to tell that he's trying to get them away from the ruins, but they get closer until the brunette steps on some vines. Then guns are drawn, their guide is shot and they are forced up the ruins.

Up top, they find the camping gear of the German guy's brother and his friends, but no one is there. They hear what sounds like a cell phone that sounds like the German guy's brother's cell phone. They hoist the German guy down a rope, but it snaps half-way down. The blond is sent down to get him since the rope crank takes two strong guys to turn. She has to jump the last 8 feet, but ends up hurting her knee. They get the German guy up on a makeshift gurney with the help of the brunette. The two women look for the cell phone sound. To their surprise, it's not a cell phone at all! It's the flowers mimicking the cell phone! The vines start to lash at them. They run out and get hoisted up to the top while killer vines try to grab them.

Long story short, they all die one by one as the killer vines prey on open wounds and panicky actions. The blond gets vines in her body from her leg wound, which drives her crazy to the point where she's cutting herself to get them out. The German guy gets his legs cut off by the would-be doctor in the only shocking scene in order to save his life since the legs were infected. All for naught though as the vines drag him away soon after, the guy with the beard pipes up, "Good thing we cut off his legs."

That's just what I was thinking.

All the while, they are held at bay by the locals that won't let them leave because they are keeping them quarantined since they've touched the vines. But as I was watching this go on, I kept thinking, "Well, I only see them guarding the one side. Why don't they try to leave on another side?"

I had to stop watching when Julia walked in after playing outside (didn't want to freak her out). Even though the movie up to this point was lame, I had to see how it ended. I saw the ending and thought, "Well, that was stupid."

This brings me to some quick rules of thumb for college kids/young couples in movies.

1. If you are in a foreign country or strange city, odds are pretty good that you will die.
2. If someone offers to take you or suggests you visit some exotic locale that's off the beaten path, turn it down because you will die.
3. If you're at this locale and people start disappearing, don't wait. Freaking run!

There is a new movie out this past weekend called "A Perfect Getaway" about a young couple that's on their honeymoon. They, of course, are hiking in a remote part of Hawaii. The movie description says this: "But when the pair comes across a group of frightened hikers discussing the horrifying murder of another newlywed couple on the islands, they begin to question whether they should turn back."

You think? They need to study my rules above.

The Denver Trip - Part 2 - Casa Bonita

I just realized I need to finish by recollections on my trip to Denver.

When we got into Denver two weeks ago, we stayed at a Marriott hotel that specialized in 'suites'. That is, every room had a "kitchen" nook and a couch with a pull-out bed. It was relatively inexpensive considering the other options.

When we got there, we noticed that there were quite a few Nebraska license plates in the parking lot. Turns out, there were a bunch of 14/15 year-old kids there playing baseball. They were all from Millard, which is where we live.

The first night there, we went to the Casa Bonita, a themed restaurant that takes all the charm of cafeteria food and combines it with a theme that can only be described as Mexico if it were in an underground cave.

I went there when I was a kid and didn't remember much about it except for a few things.

1. A long line to get our food. It wasn't exactly super long, but when you're a kid, every thing is magnified. When we got there, we got in a long line and were handed paper menus. When we finally turned a corner, it was to tell the cashier our order and then we followed another line. We get cafeteria trays and are handed random plates by workers from the "kitchen". We then took them to our table.

2. Black Bart's Cave. They have an attraction that's a haunted cave. It's not really scary, but it's filled with lights, buzzers and other things that cause a commotion. Casa Bonita was featured in an episode of South Park and when Cartman, the fat kid, walked through Black Bart's Cave, he went, "Ooooh! Scary!" This is what Laura and I said before we went into the cave. Right away, after we had passed a skull on the wall, a loud scream erupted and the skull lit up. Julia wanted to leave right now, but we couldn't as there were people behind us. She clung to me as we walked through the cave. When we got out, Julia said, "That was really scary!"

3. Hot salsa and refried beans. I think Casa Bonita was where I first tried refried beans. It was not unpleasant. I had never had them before and I liked them. The salsa, on the other hand, was a wake up call. I had never tried it before and it was like a volcano erupted in my mouth. I was in pain and I think it scared me off salsa for years. Julia stuck to her tried and true chicken strips and fries. We did get her to try a sopapia. though.

4. Cliff divers. I vaguely remember this from my visit. Every 15 minutes, they have a mini show where someone or some people will dive off the man-made cliff, have a gunfight, juggle fire torches and various other scenarios. This visit involved elaborate scenarios of pirates kidnapping damsels or a good guy/bad buy shootout. All non-cliff diving segments seemed to end in someone diving off the cliff. Even the fire juggling had diving in it. When I was there, all I remember was some guy in a speedo diving in the water. That was it. This visit had a lot of audience participation. Julia loved the shows.

5. Posing for a wanted poster. They have a mini jail where you can pose for photos in which you are part of a wanted gang from the old west. All of us kids had posed for this picture when we visited, but the photo is lost to the ages. We had fully intended to do this with Julia, but the photo was $12.50. We didn't think it was worth it. The jail wasn't big at all and it didn't look as impressive as I remembered it.

The problem with going to Casa Bonita on the first night was that Julia was so enamored by the restaurant, which she called, 'The coolest restaurant ever!' was that she wanted to go back every night. We insisted to her dismay that it was going to be the same thing every night and that it was too expensive to go again. She grumbled at this, but she lived.

http://www.casabonitadenver.com/index.htm

Julia gets a job and wants to quit it...

For Julia's birthday, we gave her a Nintendo DS. It was either buy her a few presents like we always do that total up to that amount or buy her a DS.

I noticed that she always seemed to be playing the neighbor kid's DS when we'd pick her up after school. We borrowed one for on the way to Denver and it kept Julia engrossed for the most part.

We gave her a pink DS with two used games and one new one, which is called Animal Crossing. There is an Animal Crossing game on the Nintendo Gamecube that she really liked. In that game, you create a character who moves to a new town. You choose gender, too. In Julia's game, she moved into a house and set out to live. In the original game, you could dig holes in the ground to find items, get a job to earn money, pay off a mortgage, send letters, design clothes, catch insects for a museum, catch fish to earn money and many other activities.

The DS Animal Crossing is a bigger game with more to do. Julia moved into a house and then had to get a job to pay off her mortgage when she decided to build a second floor.

She took a job at the local store run by an animal named, Tom Nook.

Julia asked me a few times how to quit the job, but I wasn't sure.

Then she suddenly burst out a while later, "Now he wants me to TALK to the customers?! Augh! I'm going to quit this job!"

Laura and I had to laugh at that. She's learning a good life lesson. Work can certainly suck.

I want to go home...

Julia likes to sit up at my work cubicle and play on my computer (my personal laptop) while I work. She's always wanted to do this. I think that she thinks that she's working like me because by the casual observer, it looks like I'm just surfing web pages when I'm actually running QA tests.

I've brought her up for the last several years every now and then. Thursday, I brought her up after lunch because I had some work to do and Thursday isn't her usual day at the summer day camp.

After about two hours of working, Julia taps me and asks me to read the board.

I turn around to read on my white board: "I want to go HOME! RIGHT NOW! I'm bored."

Steven King gets a new neighbor...