A Movie--and a Venue--Worth Going Ape Over

This will be a short post, because I'm all kinds of tired tonight, but I'll at least answer the questions raised by the discussion of last night's crazy caper: 1) How was King Kong, and 2) how was the Firewheel 18?
The short answer is, both were great. I really liked the movie (no surprise, being a fan of Peter Jackson's work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy); sure, it was really long (clocking in at three hours), but it was a good story with plenty of action. The computer-generated characters were amazingly done, and the movements of Kong (done by Andy Serkis of Gollum fame) were amazing, especially the facial expressions. It was interesting to see Jack Black play a "serious" character, and I loved the car chase scene with vintage automobiles.

As for the theatre, it's 18 screens of all stadium seating, the sound was great (they even kept the volume down for the commercials before the previews; keep that up!), the picture was nice and clear, and the seats were extremely comfortable. Being there for the very first showing in the history of the building was extremely cool; I think a lot of us who drove by the "Future home of AMC Theatres" sign that had been by the side of the road for six or seven years had been long awaiting this day. Everything was very much in "bright and shiny" mode; even the restroom looked previously unused (I'd swear I was the first one to use one particular sink, whose automated soap dispenser and faucet took a while to "awaken"), and it had that "new building smell" all over.

Perhaps the best part was--after getting out of the movie at 3:15 a.m. on a school night--walking out to the parking lot and being back home three minutes later. This is a major addition to my neighborhood, and with any luck, I won't miss as many good movies as I have in the past.

Speaking of cool stuff in the neighborhood: The Friday grand-opening countdown: Starbucks, 8:30 a.m.; Chipotle, 11 a.m. I can't wait...

Can you hear see me now? A teacher in Cyprus suffered major embarrassment when a picture of her in a state of undress was downloaded off her cell phone and sent to hundreds of students. My question is, what were those pictures doing there in the first place? If you're going to do stuff like that (which is questionable enough as it is), keep it as far away from school as possible.