In A Simplified Form

I rearranged my room today. Like at 4:00 a.m. It seemed like a good idea, and I had been wanting to do it for some time. I only moved one of my wall decorations, because it only felt appropriate that the American flag should always be overlooking my bed. I decided today, that when I have lots of extra money to spend, I’m buying 2 more flags — the Croatia flag and a Missouri state flag. Both are technically my heritage, since I’m 1/4 Croatian and I’ve lived in Missouri my entire life.

Lately, I have been working a lot. Which is great. Making that money. This week, I have mostly been an Usher-Ticket Taker, which basically means I don’t ever clean theaters, I just tear tickets the whole time. It’s actually kind’ve cool, because you feel important when you don’t have to clean and all of the other ushers have to. After working at AMC for a couple weeks, I feel like I didn’t fully explain the awesomeness of this theater when I first talked about it. I mean, I really couldn’t, because I have only begun to discover all of the sweet things it has to offer. Every seat in all 6 screens is leather, reclines, and is hooked up to a rumble machine that vibrates with the movie. So sick. Since the theater and The Marquee, the restaurant, are all in the same building, you are allowed to order anything from The Marquee and bring it into the theater. In fact, in the Cinema Suites in theaters 4, 5 and 6, which are the dinner theaters, the food you order comes from the restaurant. Also, you can order drinks from the bar in The Marquee and take them into the theater with you, as well. Even sicker. I mean overall, everything we have is completely top notch. Since we are the “flagship” theater, we get all of the cool, high-tech stuff pretty much before most every other AMC theater does. Like, when you get a drink from the concession stand, you just get the cup and the lid and the fountain is like the kind in a QuickTrip or another fancy gas station — you can put cherry, vanilla, lime, or chocolate flavor shots in your drink. Also, the popcorn seasonings are on the fountain too, so you can put as much butter on your popcorn as you want, which is becoming more common now. But, you also can add several powder seasonings, like parmesan garlic, white cheddar, barbecue and cinnamon sugar. You can be jealous all you want. Every time I work, I get to have as much free buttered-up parmesan garlic and white cheddar popcorn as I want, with a glass of cherry Mr. Pibb to wash it down. Awesome.

I was very excited to see Dinner For Schmucks. I had the day off on Monday, so I got to see it finally with my buddy Justin. I am a big Steve Carell fan. I mean, The Office is easily my favorite show on television. Carell’s character in Schmucks has everything I love about Michael Scott on The Office. I had walked in on about 1/4 of the movie just from doing theater checks at work, and I had laughed every time I would watch a few minutes of it. I do have to say that I wish I hadn’t seen so much of it before I sat down and watched the whole thing, but I still laughed and I still enjoyed it. Just in general, I’m more partial to comedy films, and although this wasn’t necessarily a great comedy film by any means, it definitely delivered for me. One of Steve Carell’s greatest strenghts as a comedy actor (and pretty much everyone on The Office) is his use of facial expressions. His physical comedy is top notch, and it was no different in Schmucks. It is really apparent, when Barry (Carell) and Tim (Rudd) first meet. Tim is in his car, on the phone and texting at the same time, when he hits Barry. Barry is just a clueless guy all the way around, and to give you an idea of how crazy he is, his profession is dressing up dead mice, putting them in scenes or landscapes he creates, and taking pictures of them — what he calls “mouse-terpieces.” Carell, of course, thrived in this role and was hilarious every time he was on screen. Add Zach Galifianakis, and hilarity ensues. I won’t go with any big leap of faith to say this was a “great movie,” but it was a good laugh and if I had seen it before I wrote my last post, it would probably be at a solid 5 or 6.

Also, I have begun reading The Lord of the Rings books (by J.R.R. Tolkien if you actually didn’t know). I am just on the first one, and I work a lot, so I haven’t read all that much of it. I am about 100 pages in, and I’m really excited about it. I like it because already, I have noticed that it is vastly different from the movies, and like any book-to-movie, there are many things that have to be cut to save time. When I am reading it, it just feels completely different than the movies, and with this much detail, it is a whole new experience than the visual effects the movie brings. Although, the movies were great and were what caused me to fall in love with The Lord of the Rings, I know I am going to enjoy the books much more already. More details to come after about 1,100 more pages. I bought the box set, which also included The Hobbit. I did a little bit of working the Google button before I started to see whether or not I should read The Hobbit before starting The Fellowship of the Ring, and I decided to read The Fellowship first. I think it’s partially because there’s no movie for The Hobbit and I was just really excited to read the book version of the movies I love so much. I suppose I will begin to read that immediately after finished The Return of the King. My inspiration for finally reading the books was, before I bought the set, I had a movie marathon of the 3 movies, since I have all of them on DVD. After looking around on all of the great websites online dedicated to the Lord of the Rings franchise (like, TolkienGateway.net, which is like a wikipedia format with all Lord of the Rings information), I decided to take it to the next step and read the books.

Well, it is actually past 6:00 a.m. now. I wonder if I will actually go to bed at this point, or just pull the all-nighter and get up soon. Oh, well. Take care and God bless.

guyphibrent

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