Pirates of the Coffee Bean

Dread Pirate KatieWent out to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End on Friday. alenxa wore her pirate costume again (previous versions at last year’s Pirates and, in a more appropriate setting, on the deck of the H.M.S. Surprise). We got to the Irvine Spectrum around 6:15, and ended up about 30 feet from the front of the line for the 8:30 showing. We had pizza from the food court, and later chocolate chip cookies from Donna B’s.

Since some moron genius decided to chop the courtyard in front of the movie theater in half and put in more shops (have they filled the shops in the last expansion, yet?), the theater has had to get a little creative in finding room for lines. Ours started between California Pizza Kitchen and P.F. Chang’s. Being off in the corner, we only got to see the pirates in our own line.

Anyway, the movie was a lot of fun. My main objection was that it got hard to keep track of all the double-, triple-, and quadruple-crosses. Despite what the reviewer for the L.A. Times thinks, it doesn’t require intimate knowledge of the previous films. All you have to know are who the major players are, and how they stand in relation to each other. You can do that by seeing the other films once while sober.

It let out around 11:30, and we went looking for a place that was still open to get something to drink. We stopped at Coffee Bean, where we discovered all the employees were dressed up as pirates. The guy at the counter was impressed with Katie’s costume, saying she was the first serious pirate they’d had all night (I guess they all stayed closer to the theater?) and gave us our drinks for free.

The rest of the weekend

Weekend Antics

Friday: Finally watched The Legend of Zorro (the second one with Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones). Much better than I expected, even if they did play fast and loose with history. Odd moment when alenxa recognized one of the actors as Ben from Lost.

Saturday: Mostly trying to catch up on my website. (Lots of new stuff in the last couple of weeks.) Ran some errands. Dropped by the local comic store for Free Comic Book Day & picked up several books, including a BSG book which is supposed to be a prequel, but which I don’t dare read until we’ve gotten a bit farther along in watching the show. Also felt I ought to buy something, and not just grab the free stuff, so I picked up (and read) a JLA book I’d been meaning to read, Syndicate Rules. It’s a sequel to both JLA: Earth-2 (in which the Justice League meets their mirror-universe counterparts, the Crime Syndicate of Amerika) and JLA/Avengers, which I finally read a few weeks ago after picking the series up at Wizard World LA. Much better than I’d been led to expect by some of the reviews.

Sunday: Went out to see Hot Fuzz, figuring Spider-Man 3 was guaranteed to still be in theaters next week. Great fun. Keep your eyes open: Once he arrives in Sanford, no detail is wasted. I liked Shaun of the Dead better, but I think that’s largely because the genre conventions being spoofed were more straight-forward: Zombies vs. a combination cop-buddy/horror/action film.

It was amazingly clear out, since it was the first day of Santa Ana winds (though they died down by midday). I seriously considered driving up into the hills to find a nice viewpoint, but after the movie, a late lunch, and some errands, it was running late enough that we just went home.

TV Thoughts

Heroes: Excellent!

Veronica Mars: The rumors about Veronica and Piz just didn’t make sense. Then I saw the first 30 seconds of the episode, and it suddenly made perfect sense. Can you say rebound?

Lost: Locke did exactly what Ben wanted him to. The others are big on the concept of “good people.” If he’d killed his father himself, he wouldn’t have qualified to join. Getting Sawyer to do it proves that he’s resourceful and manipulative enough to get “bad people” to do the dirty work for him — just like Ben manipulated him into blowing up the sub.

So, how long did it take to pull the trigger on Locke’s dad, the con artist, being the original Sawyer? 1 year? 1½?

Also, I’m operating under the assumption that the wreckage was either planted or simulated. I never liked the “they’re all dead and in purgatory” explanation, and the show’s producers have denied it several times. If they’ve reversed course on this, I probably won’t be watching Season 4 (assuming there is one).