In other entertainment news... the last three movies we've seen on DVD have all had the same actor in them: Richard Jenkins. The reason for this is not because we were fans. In fact, it is only after the third movie that we figured we should learn his name. I'm not saying we don't like his work. He's a descent actor. I'm just saying it was a coincidence that we watched three of his movies in a row. The first movie was Burn After Reading, which I'll give a B-. It is mostly funny with good performances, but it lacks the classic quality of other Cohen brother films (see The Big Lebowski or Fargo). The second was Step Brothers. In the commentary, they admit they were making it up as they went along. I think that's pretty much the level of it. It's just two actors trying to say the funniest things they can think of and catch it on film. It turns out to be (in my estimation) a waste of time (I'll give it a D), mostly because it's just a bunch of randomly dirty jokes strung together by a thin plot. Instead of watching the movie I recommend listening to the commentary which is all musical improv. It is much funnier than the movie (albeit also raunchy in spots) yet without the pretense of intention. The third movie that we saw with Jenkins was The Visitor. This is a worthwhile movie, though a bit flat at times. It has some good performances and an interesting story. But most importantly it features the djembe drum. I'd give it a B.
We also recently watched the entire series of News Radio, an NBC sitcom from the mid-nineties. We are just bummed there are no more episodes to watch. It definitely deserves and A. I'll be watching it all again before you know it.
Another NBC sitcom we now own is the 4th season of The Office, which completes our collection for now. It was 40% off at Circuit City. Since I heard they were going out of business, I've been making a weekly visit to our local store to see what I can see. In fact, last Saturday night, on the way home from visiting friends, Cristina and I decided to pop in real quick at the Montclair location just to see if they had anything different there than at our San Bernardino store. It turns out there was a rather nice TV stand we both liked. There were two on display, but none in boxes and the displays were pretty well nicked. But we did notice two matching audio cabinets there... in their boxes! All the furniture was 30% off so we decided that, if we could find the TV stand in the box at another store, we would buy both items.
The next day, whilst Cristina was hosting a Gold Canyon candle party, I stopped in at my parents' place to go online and see where the closest Circuit City stores were. But the web site was unhelpful. So I simply Googled the nearest locations. Besides San Bernardino, Riverside was the closest, next to that was Rancho Cucamonga. So I got in the car and went on my quest. First, I went to the San Bernardino store to see if they had the TV stand. But they didn't carry it. So I got back in the car and drove in the pouring rain to Riverside. When I got there I discovered that that particular location had already been closed. It was too late to try another store since I only had about 40 mintutes to get to church for rehearsal and the weather would not allow me to drive anywhere fast.
Monday came and I drove out to Circuit City in Rancho Cucamonga. They had the TV stand on display, but I did not see any boxes of them. I looked around the whole store before I came back for one more look and found that there was a stack of them right in the corner! They had the TV stand! In fact, they had about 11 of them.What they didn't have was any audio cabinets. So I took a chance and bought the TV stand and sped off to Montclair where we first saw them. They still had two! Now, the only problem was figuring out how to get both of those boxes to fit in my Acura CL. After (very) little mental and physical exertion I managed to pull it off. My mission was accomplished. Over the next couple of days Cristina and I assembled the new pieces and I spent more than a little time reconnecting the wires for all my stereo components. Now, we just need to get rid of our old audio cabinet...
I suppose I could say more, but I'm already rambling so randomly. I'll just add that tonight I ate Green Burrito, the "mexican" half of Carl's Jr.'s menu, for the first time. I ordered chicken taquitos and a taco. It was more like scalding hot chicken paste rolled into a tasteless hard tortilla shell served with a "guacamole" made with pico de gallo, green goo, and enough jalepeno to hurt my tongue, and all this accompanied by a taco shell filled up only about 1/3 of the way with grease and bits of meat and a little processed cheese. On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give it a 2, not because it didn't make my stomach churn; it did, within about 20 mintutes. I would not give it a 1 or a 0 because it did not make me throw up or give me the runs. Even so, this was not a neutral experience like bland food--it was bad food! The only redeeming quality was the fact that it had calories. Green Burrito is quite possibly the worst "mexican" "food" I have ever eaten. And as John Pinette would say, if it don't tast good with butter on it, it's not food.
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